WAR'S  AFTERMATH 


WAR'S    AFTERMATH 

A    PRELIMINARY    STUDY    OF  THE 

EUGENICS  OF  WAR 

AS    ILLUSTRATED    BY 

THE  CIVIL  WAR  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 


THE  LATE  WARS  IN  THE  BALKANS 

BY 

DAVID  STARR  JORDAN 

CHANCELLOR  OF  STANFORD  UNIVERSITY 
AND 

HARVEY  ERNEST  JORDAN 

PROFESSOR  OF  HISTOLOGY  AND  EMBRYOLOGY 
IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  VIRGINIA 


BOSTON  AND   NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,   1914,  BY  HARVEY  ERNEST  JORDAN 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  October  iqi^ 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

IN  the  summer  of  1912,  the  undersigned, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  World  Peace 
Foundation,  made  an  attempt  to  form  some 
measure  of  the  effects,  on  the  Southern 
States  of  our  National  Union,  of  the  reversed 
selection  due  to  the  loss  of  life  in  the  Civil 
War  of  fifty  years  ago.  In  this  work  he  was 
associated  with  Professor  Edward  Benjamin  v 
Krehbiel,  of  the  chair  of  Modern  History  in 

Stanford   University,   and   with    Professor 

^ 

Harvey  E.  Jordan,  of  the  chair  of  Histology 
and  Embryology  in  the  University  of  Vir- 
ginia. Professor  Krehbiel  devoted  himself  to 
the  historical  and  statistical  phases  of  the 
subject,  while  Professor  Jordan  and  the 
writer  considered  chiefly  the  biological  ele- 
ments, especially  those  related  to  eugenics 
and  race  progress.  The  present  memoir  con- 
v 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

tains  an  abstract  of  the  material  secured  and 
the  conclusions  reached  in  this  phase  of  the 
investigation,  the  others  being  later  treated 
elsewhere.  It  will  be  freely  admitted  that  all 
conclusions  must  be  tentative  and  that  no 
mathematical  accuracy  in  the  statement  of 
the  eugenic  loss  of  the  Civil  War  is  possible. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  evidence  of  the 
magnitude  of  such  loss  grows,  in  cumulating 
degree,  with  every  additional  survey  of  the 
facts  concerned.  The  writers  are  under  spe- 
cial obligation  to  some  hundreds  of  veterans 
of  the  Confederate  army  in  Virginia,  Georgia, 
North  Carolina,  and  other  States  for  frank 
and  friendly  discussion  of  the  questions  in- 
volved, and  to  about  one  hundred  others,  not 
personally  known,  who  have  answered  sym- 
pathetically our  letters  of  inquiry. 

For  the  studies  in  question,  Rockbridge 
and   Spottsylvania   Counties,   in   Virginia, 
with  Cobb  County,  in  Georgia,  were  espe- 
cially chosen  as  typical  districts.   Observa- 
vi 


PREFATORY  NOTE 

tions  of  minor  importance  were  made  in 
Henrico,  Dinwiddie,  and  Appomattox  Coun- 
ties, in  Virginia,  Wake  County,  in  North 
Carolina,  and  Knox  County,  in  Tennessee. 
The  appended  poem,  by  the  undersigned,  is 
suggested  by  our  experiences  in  "The  Wilder- 
ness" of  Spottsylvania. 

DAVID  STARR  JORDAN. 

THE  RED  HOUSE, 

HORNTON  STREET,  LONDON, 
July  25,  1913- 


NOTE.— An  Introduction  dealing  with  the  outbreak 
of  the  general  European  war  and  an  additional  chap- 
ter on  Macedonia,  both  written  by  Dr.  David  Starr 
Jordan  while  this  book  was  in  press,  will  be  found 
in  the  succeeding  pages. 


CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION.     1914      .      .      .      .      .      .  xiii 

IN  THE  WILDERNESS xxv 

WAR'S  AFTERMATH  IN  VIRGINIA 

THE  PROBLEM  AT  ISSUE I 

SPOTTSYLVANIA  COUNTY         .      .      .      .      .      8 
ROCKBRIDGE  COUNTY       .      .      .     •.      .      .    IO 

COBB  COUNTY,  GEORGIA II 

PRELIMINARY  ASSUMPTIONS  ' 12 

VOLUNTEER  AND  CONSCRIPT         .      .      .      .    13 

THE  DESERTER 15 

THE  MILITARY  COMPANIES  .      .      .      .18 

STATISTICAL  EXACTNESS  IMPOSSIBLE  .      .      .19 
ANALYSIS  OF  OPINION      .      .      ...      .20 

"BEST  MEN  FIRST  TO  ENLIST"    .      .      .      .    22 

THE  FLOWER  OF  THE  PEOPLE  LOST         .      .    24 

WAR  TOOK  CHIEFLY  THE  PHYSICALLY  FlT      .    29 

VOLUNTEERS  SUPERIOR  TO  CONSCRIPTS    .      .    30 

ix 


CONTENTS 

"BUSHMEN"  AND  OTHER  DESERTERS  FEW     .  32 

THOSE  WHO  FOUGHT  MOST  SURVIVED  LEAST   .  33 

THE  BEST  LOST  MOST 36 

THE  BEST  BLOOD  SUFFERED  MOST     ...  39 

THE  STRONG  MISSED  SINCE  THE  WAR      .      .  41 

SUFFERING  AND  DEATH  OF  WIDOWS         .       .  45 
SWEETHEARTS  REMAINED  UNMARRIED;  OTHERS 

MARRIED  IN  LOWER  STATIONS  .      ...  45 

FARMERS  NOW  NOT  INFERIOR       ....  47 

MEN  IN  COURTS  AVERAGE  LOWER    ...  48 
PUBLIC  MEN    INFERIOR,    THE   GREAT   MEN 

FEWER 49 

RISE  OF  THE  MIDDLE  CLASS        ....  52 

ALL  CLASSES  KILLED  IN  WAR  .  53 

LACK  OF  SCHOOLING  vs.  INFERIORITY  OF  BLOOD  54 

Loss  OF  COURAGE 56 

LOWERING  OF  AVERAGE   THROUGH   IMMIGRA- 
TION       57 

EFFECTS  OF  WHISKEY 58 

COUSIN  MARRIAGE 59 

Loss  OF  STRENGTH  THROUGH  EMIGRATION     .  59 
x 


CONTENTS 

THE  STRONG  FELL  IN  BATTLE,  THE  WEAK  DIED 

IN  CAMPS          62 

INJURY  THROUGH  FAILURE  IN  EDUCATION      .  64 

POSSIBILITY  OF  AVOIDING  THE  CIVIL  WAR       .  64 

DEMOCRACY  OF  THE  CAMP 69 

DISAPPEARANCE  OF  SOCIAL  LINES      ...  70 

BLESSINGS  OF  LABOR 70 

SOCIAL  GOOD  FOLLOWED  THE  WAR,  BUT  WAR 

WHOLLY  BAD 71 

NOT  ONE  WORD  TO  BE  SAID  FOR  WAR,  AS  WAR  71 

CONCLUSION •  77 

WAR'S  AFTERMATH  IN  MACEDONIA  84 


INTRODUCTION 

1914 

THIS  little  book  was  written,  by  my  col- 
league and  myself,  just  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  Balkan  War.  This  note  is  written  at  the 
outbreak  of  the  greater  war  instigated  though 
not  caused  by  the  attempted  suppression  of 
Servia  and  the  rape  of  Belgium.  In  the  mean 
time  the  senior  author  has  seen  much  of  the 
first  aftermath  of  war  in  other  nations.  He 
has  traversed  Macedonia  and  beheld  its 
desolation  and  the  expulsion  of  half  its  peo- 
ple. He  has  seen  the  Bulgarians  driven  north- 
ward by  tens  of  thousands  up  the  Struma 
Valley  from  the  Greek  possessions.  He  has 
been  cognizant  of  the  forced  emigration  from 
Silistria  and  from  Thrace.  He  has  seen  Al- 
banians driven  from  the  Novibazar,  these 
in  turn  driving  Greeks  by  the  hundred  thou- 
sand out  of  Turkish  Thrace.  And  from  the 
xiii 


INTRODUCTION 

Greek  possessions  he  has  seen  Moslems  by 
the  thousand  leaving  in  the  steerage  of 
steamers  bound  from  Salonica  to  Stamboul. 
All  these,  farmers  and  villagers,  rich  or  poor, 
had  left  behind  their  holdings  with  only  that 
which  they  could  carry  on  their  backs.  And 
the  burned  houses  of  the  refugees  of  the  one 
race  became  the  new  homes  of  some  other. 
And  the  way  of  the  refugee  is  hard,  beset  by 
hunger,  cold,  and  the  infectious  diseases 
which  always  follow  war.  For  sanitation 
implies  security  and  peace,  and  these  the 
battling  ages  never  knew. 

Macedonia  is  about  as  large  as  Virginia. 
It  has  had  two  thousand  years  of  civiliza- 
tion. Aristotle  was  born  there,  and  alas, 
Alexander  also.  But  it  is  still  a  wilderness, 
poorly  cultivated,  scantily  cleared.  A  Chin- 
ese proverb  tells  us,  "Where  armies  quarter, 
thorns  and  thistles  grow."  Armies  have 
quartered  in  Macedonia  for  a  hundred  gen- 
erations. St.  Paul  found  Christians  there, 
xiv 


INTRODUCTION 

perhaps  as  many  as  exist  there  now,  and  at 
Philippi  in  Macedonia  the  last  gleam  of 
Roman  liberty  flickered  to  extinction.  In 
this  old  Macedonia  are  rich  farmlands,  cov- 
ered with  tangling  vines  and  prairie  flowers, 
seeming  never  to  have  known  the  plough. 

How  rich  the  human  harvest  buried  in 
Macedonia,  in  the  weary  warring  years  from 
Philippi  to  Kilkis!  Let  our  imagination  com- 
pare the  men  of  to-day  with  the  men  who 
might  have  been:  the  men  of  to-day  fur- 
tively huddled  in  dirty  villages  fired  by  each 
passing  army,  and  the  others  lost  to  the 
world  before  they  were  born  because  their 
fathers  died  in  these  same  armies.  "Those 
who  fought  the  most  survived  the  least," 
in  Macedonia  as  in  Virginia.  Only  the  man 
who  survives  is  followed  by  his  kind.  The 
man  who  is  left  determines  the  future.  From 
him  springs  "the  human  harvest,"  and,  as 
in  Rome,  and  in  every  war-swept  region,  the 
human  harvest  in  Macedonia  is  bad. 
xv 


INTRODUCTION 

Since  this  book  was  in  type,  a  world  revo- 
lution has  taken  place.  The  flames  of  the 
Balkans  have  spread  to  greater  Europe.  A 
civil  war  has  torn  apart  the  civilization  of 
our  times.  The  Europe  we  have  known,  the 
Europe  of  science,  art,  literature,  commerce, 
and  industry,  exists  no  more.  A  mad  rush 
of  barbarism  has  wrecked  it  all,  the  barbar- 
ism it  cherished  for  its  own  defense.  It  has 
broken  all  restraining  bonds  of  common 
interest,  of  common  friendliness,  and  of  com- 
mon thought.  The  mailed  fist  has  crashed 
through  the  delicate  far-flung  fabric  which 
has  meant  so  much  to  us.  It  has  brushed 
aside  our  conventions  of  international  law 
and  of  personal  rights  as  though  these  had 
been  cobwebs. 

It  is  not  the  barbarism  of  one  nation 
alone.  Each  nation  in  its  degree  has  yielded 
to  the  same  influence.  But  the  democracies 
of  Europe  have  held  it  in  restraint.  The 
autocracies  are  its  creations.  Those  nations 
xvi 


INTRODUCTION 

which  the  people  do  not  govern  are  derelicts 
on  the  international  sea,  dangerous  to  others, 
and  still  more  so  to  themselves.  The  spirit 
of  Absolutism  is  everywhere  the  same.  It 
holds  all  Europe  under  martial  law,  and  mar- 
tial law  is  not  law.  It  is  law's  paralysis. 

Against  the  onrush  of  barbarism,  the  na- 
tions of  Europe  have  created  no  defense, 
save  barbarism  itself.  Against  the  force  of 
arms,  they  oppose  only  the  force  of  arms. 
It  is  too  late  to  ask  if  there  is  a  better  way. 
There  is  no  other  left  to-day.  The  better 
way  was  possible,  not  now,  but  ten  years 
ago.  In  the  midst  of  war,  there  is  but  one 
way  out,  and  that  leads  onward. 

Of  the  contending  nations,  Belgium  alone 
had  clean  hands  when  the  war  began.  She 
is  destined  to  be  the  greatest  sufferer  to  the 
last,  and  the  sufferings  she  feels  and  must 
feel  again  it  is  impossible  for  the  imagina- 
tion to  conceive,  or  the  pen  to  record. 

The  economic  development  of  Belgium 
xvii 


INTRODUCTION 

is  checked  for  half  a  century.  Her  social 
development  is  deranged  for  we  know  not 
how  long.  Exhaustion,  stagnation,  misery, 
all  these  affect  the  physical,  the  economic, 
the  social,  the  intellectual  life.  Thorns  and 
thistles  grow  in  the  harassed  mind  as  in  the 
devastated  field.  The  higher  life  withers  in 
the  atmosphere  of  poverty  and  pestilence. 
The  muses  flee  from  the  wolf  at  the  door. 

Beyond  the  present  loss,  when  the  "hu- 
man cry  as  of  a  lost  and  deserted  child "  is 
hushed,  follows  the  weakening  of  the  na- 
tional stamina.  The  best  of  the  young  blood 
is  lost.  Those  who  should  have  been  the 
fathers  of  the  next  generation  lie  in  the 
trenches  of  Liege,  Namur,  Dinant,  and 
Charleroi.  After  each  war  comes  the  pau- 
city of  genius,  the  failure  of  personal  initia- 
tive. The  sons  of  those  whom  war  could  not 
use  replace  those  who  gave  their  lives  for 
the  country.  When  a  man  of  distinction 
gives  up  his  life  for  any  cause  he  sacrifices 
xviii 


INTRODUCTION 

more  than  himself.  He  closes  the  door  of  the 
long  future  of  those  who  might  have  been. 
In  the  strange  world  of  "Pan-Germany" 
is  invented  a  lying  philosophy  as  a  sanction 
for  war.  In  contemptuous  ignorance  of  all 
Darwin's  work  and  thought,  they  call  it  "  So- 
cial Darwinism/'  This  philosophy  teaches 
that  the  "survival  of  the  fittest"  imposes 
on  us  the  necessity  of  war,  that  war  is,  in- 
deed, the  sublime  instrument  by  which  the 
Deity  ordains  the  destruction  of  the  hum- 
blest of  his  creatures  that  his  favorites  in 
shining  armor  may  inherit  the  earth.  The 
small  nations  and  the  backward  nations 
must  yield  to  the  sway  of  the  strong,  and 
even  the  strong  from  time  to  time  must  give 
up  the  half  of  their  number,  as  a  sacrifice  to 
insure  their  continued  strength:  and  there- 
fore murder  and  rapine  are  necessities  of 
progress.  "War  without  rapine,"  says  Ana- 
tole  France,  "  is  like  tripe  without  mustard, 
too  insipid"  for  a  man  of  spirit, 
xix 


INTRODUCTION 

The  military  exponent  of  Pan-Germanism, 
General  von  Bernhardi,  demonstrates  that 
"Law  is  only  for  the  weak;  force  is  for  the 
strong;  law  is  only  a  makeshift;  might  the 
sole  reality."  Perverting  all  history,  he 
would  make  us  believe  that  in  war  the  fittest 
survive.  "War  is  as  necessary  as  the  strug- 
gle of  the  elements  in  nature."  "Inferior 
or  decaying  races  would  easily  choke  the 
growth  of  the  healthy  budding  element  and 
a  universal  decadence  would  follow."  The 
simple  fact  is  that,  always  and  everywhere, 
war  means  the  reversal  of  natural  selection. 
Twenty  centuries  ago,  Sophocles  declared 
that  "war  does  not  of  choice  destroy  bad 
men,  but  good  men  ever."  In  every  war  in 
every  nation  there  is  left  "the  gap  in  our 
picked  and  chosen  the  long  years  cannot 
fill." 

Schiller,  one  of  the  noblest  spirits  in  that 
Germany  which  Prussian  militarism  is  smoth- 
ering and  poisoning  to-day,  touched  the  real 
xx 


INTRODUCTION 

truth  in  a  single  line:  "Immer  der  Krieg 
verschlingt  die  Besten."  ("Always  war  de- 
vours the  best/5)  The  best  of  everything  is 
drawn  into  its  insatiate  maw. 

In  the  Civil  War  between  the  States,  the 
position  of  Virginia  fifty  years  ago  had  much 
in  common  with  that  of  Belgium  to-day. 
Neither  had  any  leading  part  in  the  original 
causes  of  conflict.  Both,  through  geographi- 
cal position,  lay  in  the  very  center  of  devas- 
tation. In  both  the  disaster  is  the  sadder 
because  it  is  spread  over  generations  to  come. 

As  the  Union  of  the  States  "could  not 
exist  half  slave,  half  free,"  so  the  union  of 
Europe  could  not  endure  with  Absolutism 
and  Democracy  side  by  side.  No  democracy 
is  safe  with  an  autocracy  as  its  neighbor. 
No  mailed  despot  is  safe  by  the  side  of  a  free 
people. 

The  "Armed  Peace"  of  Europe,  with  its 
mediaeval  "Balance  of  Power,"  carried  with- 
in itself  the  certainty  of  its  own  destruction, 
xxi 


INTRODUCTION 

It  is  to  be  destroyed  by  its  own  barbarous 
methods.  War  is  a  sword  without  a  hilt 
which  wounds  those  who  wield  it  as  well  as 
those  who  feel  its  blade.  It  is  an  instrument 
of  barbarism,  and  civilization  can  never  be 
secure  while  calling  on  barbarism  for  its  de- 
fense. No  holy  war  was  ever  carried  on  save 
by  the  most  unholy  means.  And  every  war, 
holy  or  unholy,  wanton  or  inevitable,  brings 
desolation  as  its  aftermath. 

Meanwhile,  as  I  write,  the  dance  of  death 
goes  on.  Three  hundred  millions  of  men  and 
women  of  Europe,  hoping  above  all  for  secur- 
ity and  peace,  stand  helplessly  by,  awaiting 
the  end,  suffering  the  present  misery  and 
taking  unresisting  the  final  consequences. 
There  is  no  other  way.  The  god  of  battles 
is  deaf  and  blind.  "A  great  soldier  like  me/' 
said  Napoleon,  "cares  not  a  tinker's  damn 
for  the  lives  of  a  million  men."  He  recks  no 
more  for  the  wail  of  an  outraged  nation  than 
for  the  cry  of  a  starving  child. 
xxii 


INTRODUCTION 

As  the  future  of  Europe  shall  unfold  it- 
self, and  as  the  fate  of  the  devastated  states 
shall  begin  to  take  form,  it  may  be  instruc- 
tive to  glance  backward  over  the  half-cen- 
tury which  has  seen  the  humiliation  and  the 
regeneration  of  one  of  the  noblest  of  the 
commonwealths  which  make  up  our  Repub- 
lic, the  State  of  Virginia. 

DAVID  STARR  JORDAN. 

LONDON,  August  25,  1914. 


IN   THE  WILDERNESS 

I 

I  STAND  as  in  a  dream  within  a  wood, 
A  forest  crass  men  call  "The  Wilderness," 
Of  ill-grown  oak  trees  and  stunt,  scanty  pines, 
With  sumacs  dun  and  huddling  sassafras, 
Enmeshed  with  brambles  rude  and  tangling 

vines ; 

Its  mossy  brooksides  blue  with  violets, 
Its  red  soil  ever  redder  with  men's  hurt. 
Men  named  this  forest  once  "The  Poisoned 

Wood," 

And  it  was  poisoned  by  the  wrath  of  man, 
'T  was  trebly  poisoned  by  the  flames  of  Hell 
That  burned  through  every  corner  of  the  wood. 

Out  from  the  forest,  as  in  nightmare  dream, 
Out  from  its  straggling  trees  and  struggling 

vines, 

Out  from  its  red  soil,  redder  with  men's  hurt, 
Its  ravaged  banksides  blue  with  violets ; 
From  withering  venom  of  its  flames  of  Hell, 
I  see  a  sad  procession  creeping  down, 
Full  seven  miles  of  maimed  and  broken  men, 

xxv 


IN  THE  WILDERNESS 

Full  seven  miles  of  ghastly  shapes  of  men, 
Pour  like  a  vomit  from  the  Wilderness. 
Out  from  the  pious  shades  of  Salem  Church, 
Out  from  the  charcoal  Furnace  on  the  hill, 
From  sparse  farmhouses  saturate  with  dread, 
Field  hospitals  of  gruesome  awfulness, 
Where  women,  war-crazed,  neither  knew  nor 

cared 

If  their  own  children  were  alive  or  dead. 
From  Sunlight's  enfilade  where  Sedgwick  fell, 
The  cross-roads  court-house  with  the  old  town 

pump, 

Inviting  pause  upon  the  Richmond  road, 
The  Bloody  Angle,  by  McCool's  sweet  spring, 
From  the  old  roadside  inn  whose  awful  name 
Men  spoke  in  bated  whispers — Chancellors ville ! 

In  its  green  paddock,  leading  toward  the  ford 
Of  Rappahannock  and  of  Rapidan, 
Amidst  the  peach  trees'  rosy  blossoming, 
Among  the  whitewashed  shanties  of  the  slaves, 
The  ground  was  piled  thrice  deep  with  wrecks 

of  men 

Living  and  dying  —  those  which  once  were  men, 
The  Blue  —  the  Red  —  commingled  with  the 

Gray! 
The  blazing  Inn  an  awesome  funeral  pyre. 

xxvi 


IN  THE  WILDERNESS 

And  whoso  sought  his  friend  must  pick  his  way 

As  one  who  leaps  from  floating  log  to  log 

In  some  far  Northern  river  —  Chancellorsville! 

Men  tell  us  how  the  angry  sun  went  down, 

A  bloodshot  disk  upon  a  shrinking  sky; 

And   then   uprose   the   great  white  Maytime 

moon, 

Flooding  the  forest  with  her  patient  light, 
Till  Horror  paled  in  dumb  forgetfulness. 

Can  we  give  praise  to  Lord  of  Heaven,  or  Hell, 
For  aught  men  did  here  in  the  Wilderness? 

II 

Down  in  yon  somber  hollow  Jackson  fell, 
His  red  hand  raised  in  worship,  to  the  last, 
Austere,  devoted,  of  his  Duty  sure, 
For  States  make  Duty  of  the  wrath  of  man, 
Imputing  Righteousness  to  deeds  abhorred. 
"The  soldier  has  no  duty  save  to  die." 
And  is  this  Duty  that  he  thus  should  die? 
Are  nations  built  on  bones  of  mangled  men? 
Have  bonds  of  union  no  cement  save  blood? 
" Obedience  to  the  Law  before  all  Time!" 
But  then  is  such  obedience  supreme, 
Brought   to    fulfillment   through    red-handed 


rage? 


XXVll 


IN  THE  WILDERNESS 

"The  brave  makes  Danger  Opportunity." 
Is  there  no  danger  save  from  cannonades  ? 
Is  there  no  hardier,  craftier  foe  than  this 
Whose  strength  is  measured  by  a  saber-thrust? 
The  path  to  Justice  between  man  and  man 
Must  lead  through  strife,  but  not  through  pools 

of  blood; 

The  clash  of  will,  but  not  the  crush  of  men. 
But  war's  fierce  furnace  melts  the  chains  of 

slaves ; 

Its  march  obliterates  old  vested  wrongs; 
Foul  Bastilles  crumble  at  its  trumpet  call, 
And  tyrants  gasp  at  serried  hosts  of  men. 
War's  candent  fire-bath  purifies  the  state, 
War's  furnace  heat  the  bond  of  union  welds. 
Shall  not  war  bring  the  great  Enfranchise- 
ment, 
The  freedom  from  all  shackles  of  the  Past? 

He  reaps  dire  harvest  who  sows  dragon's  teeth! 
When  Law  is  silent,  anarch  Murder  rules; 
Law  is  humanity's  consummate  flower, 
And  Love  is  the  fulfillment  of  the  Law. 
Its  blind  and  brute  denial,  that  is  War, 
The  Laws  of  War!  In  war,  there  is  no  law, 
Where  war  is  not,  there  and  there  only  — 
Law. 

xxviii 


IN  THE  WILDERNESS 

Where  armies  quarter,  thorns  and  thistles  grow- 
New  wrongs  spring  ever  in  the  wake  of  war, 
From  their  hot  ashes  mount  up  fresh  Bastilles; 
The  Sutler  camps  on  the  Avenger's  trail; 
The  Mailed  Fist  is  but  a  burglar's  tool; 
Gross  cities  swell  with  loot  of  great  campaigns 
The  Vulture  gorges  where  the  Eagle  strikes. 

And  each  fresh  slaughter  dwarfs  the  breed  of  men. 
The  Unreturning  ever  were  the  Brave! 

Nothing  enduring  yet  in  wrath  was  wrought; 
No  noble  deed  in  hatred;  evermore 
The  Master  Builder  works  in  soberness ; 
A  world  which  reeked  with  wars,  and   reeks 

again, 
The  Prince  of  Peace  in  patience  re-creates. 

Oh,  take  away  the  frippery  of  war, 
Its  zest  for  glory,  its  mouth-filling  lies, 
Its  rippling  colors  and  resounding  drums, 
Its  chargers,  bannerets,  and  bugle  calls, 
Its  heady  wine  of  music  and  acclaim 
That  make  a  slaughter  seem  a  holiday! 

Oh,  take  away  the  sanction  of  the  State, 
That  haloes  murder  with  a  holy  light, 

xxix 


IN  THE  WILDERNESS 

That  makes  our  common  hate  seem  Wrath 

Divine, 
And  thunderous  shoutings  as  the  voice  of  God. 

Ill 

I  do  remember  in  the  far-off  years, 
Through  the  long  twilight  of  the  August  nights 
(The  nights  of  half  a  century  ago), 
I  waited  for  my  brother,  whom  I  loved,  — 
I  waited  for  my  brother,  and  he  came,  — 
Came  but  in  dreams  and  never  came  again, 
For  he  was  with  the  Sisterhood  of  Fate; 
Man  is;  Man  is  not;  Man  shall  never  be. 

IV 

How  like  a  chasm  yawns  our  history! 

Still  figures  pour  out  from  the  Poisoned  Wood. 

I  seem  to  see  them  on  their  fated  way, 

I  seem  to  see  them  creep  from  death  to  death, 

Full  seven  miles  of  crushed  and  wasted  men, 

Full  seven  miles  of  tattered  shreds  of  men, 

Some  dazed  with  blood,  not  knowing  what  they 

do, 

Rising  to  fall,  and  falling  not  to  rise. 
Whither  they  go  —  What  matter?  They  must 


go! 


xxx 


IN  THE  WILDERNESS 

If  there  be  ghosts,  they  hover  o'er  this  road; 
If  they  be  ghosts,  they  fill  this  Poisoned  Wood! 

Perchance  no  spirits  wander  of  the  slain, 
For  these  are  sleeping  in  the  woodland  glade, 
The  Blue  for  aye  unsevered  with  the  Gray. 
Under  that  Flag  where  Hatred  dies  away 
They  rest  as  men  may  rest  whose  work  is  done, 
The  Horror  lost  in  blest  forgetfulness. 
For  they  are  with  the  Sisterhood  of  Fate, 
Man  is;  Man  is  not;  Man  shall  never  be. 

Yet  there  be  ghosts  here,  ghosts  that  haunt  for 

aye! 

Rising  forever  from  the  Poisoned  Wood, 
The  Slain  Unnumbered;  those  who,  still  unborn, 
Through  wistful  ages  never  to  be  born, 
Never  may  answer  to  their  country's  call; 
The  long,  sad  roll  that  lengthens  with  the  years. 
The  sweet  life  wasted,  widening  with  the  years, 
Those  who  have  lived  not,  never  yet  can  live; 
Their  fathers  slumber  in  the  Wilderness, 
While  these  are  with  the  Sisterhood  of  Fate, 
Man  is;  Man  is  not;  Man  shall  never  be. 

Shall  God  not  fill  another  universe 

With  Life  we  waste  in  wicked  wantonness? 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

I 

IN   VIRGINIA  * 
THE    PROBLEM   AT   ISSUE 

THE  problem  considered  in  this  memoir  is 
that  of  the  determination  of  the  racial  or 
biological  consequences  of  the  War  between 
the  States  of  America  in  1861  to  1865.  It  is 
well  ascertained  that  eugenic  or  racial  de- 
cline, which  may  occur  in  any  region,  is  due 
to  one  or  all  of  three  causes :  — 

(1)  Destruction  of  the  fittest,  through  war 
or  other  cause  producing  contra-selec- 
tion  or  reversal  of  selection. 

(2)  Emigration,  by  which  the  most  ener- 
getic or  enterprising  pass  on  to  other 
regions  or  in  search  of  larger  oppor- 
tunities. 

I 


WAR  S  AFTERMATH 

(3)  Immigration,  by  which  the  vacancies 
are  filled  by  weaker  stock,  "the  beaten 
men  of  the  beaten  races/' 

These  influences,  nowhere  wholly  absent, 
have  affected  different  nations  in  varying 
fashion.  In  the  Eastern  and  Southern 
United  States,  a  visible  decline  of  average  is 
associated  with  the  first  of  these  causes,  and 
in  certain  localities  with  the  second  also.  The 
third  cause  has  been  also  potent,  but  mostly 
in  the  great  cities  and  the  centers  of  manu- 
facture. The  present  discussion  is  confined 
chiefly  to  the  first  of  these  elements,  the  re- 
versed selection  of  war.  For  purposes  of  in- 
tensity and  accuracy,  it  is  further  confined  to 
the  Southern  States  and  for  the  most  part  to 
two  counties  of  the  State  of  Virginia  which 
are  in  a  degree  typical  of  the  other  regions 
involved  in  the  Civil  War. 

It  is  evident,  to  begin  with,  that  the  loss 
of  nearly  a  million  of  young  men  largely  of 
superior  social  worth  must  involve  a  racial 

2 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

injury  to  a  country,  both  in  its  immediate 
effects  and  in  its  influence  on  future  heredity. 
"Like  the  seed  is  the  harvest/'  Heredity  runs 
level,  and  the  man  who  is  left  determines  the 
racial  future  of  the  nation.  No  one  could 
maintain  on  any  grounds  that  such  loss  would 
be  racially  beneficial,  however  the  political 
or  social  results  of  war  may  be  estimated. 

If  this  loss  works  racial  hurt,  as  seems  un- 
deniable, even  on  the  grounds  of  plain  com- 
mon sense,  this  effect  should  be  patent  now 
after  an  interval  of  two  generations.  How- 
ever hard  it  may  be  to  trace  these  effects,  it 
will  never  be  any  easier  in  the  future.  No  one 
misses  that  which  he  has  never  had,  and  the 
gaps  of  the  past,  however  great,  seem  always 
to  be  filled.  The  eugenic  effects  of  the  Civil 
War  constitute  a  matter  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance, deserving  of  the  most  careful  investiga- 
tion, and  no  time  in  the  future  can  be  as 
favorable  as  the  present  for  this  work. 

In  the  War  between  the  States,  the  losses, 
3 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

North  and  South,  were  approximately  equal. 
These  losses  are  usually  estimated  at  about 
700,000  men,  divided  in  the  proportion  of 
400,000  to  300,000.  Counting  all  deaths  due 
directly  to  the  war,  this  may  be  held  to  be  an 
underestimate,  and  for  our  purposes  we  may 
assume  one  million  not  unequally  divided. 
This  loss  represented  about  two  per  cent  of 
the  white  population  of  the  North  and  about 
ten  per  cent  of  that  of  the  South.  Of  the 
colored  or  negro  population  no  account  is 
taken  in  the  present  discussion.  The  South- 
ern loss  of  human  wealth  was  therefore  five 
times  as  heavy  as  in  the  North,  and  the  re- 
sults of  this  loss  should  be  correspondingly 
more  evident.  This  is  in  fact  the  case,  al- 
though in  certain  Northern  States,  as  Ver- 
mont, Connecticut,  Massachusetts,  the  loss 
was  almost  as  great  relatively  to  the  popula- 
tion as  in  Virginia  or  Georgia. 

This  loss  fell  on  the  men  of  that  part  of 
the  community  racially  most  valuable,  the 
4 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

young  men  between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and 
thirty-five.  At  least  forty  per  cent  of  these  in 
the  South  died  without  issue.  Even  among 
the  Southern  States  this  loss  was  unequally 
distributed,  Virginia  and  North  Carolina  ap- 
parently suffering  most.1  Virginia  and  North 

1  It  is  estimated  that  Virginia  furnished  approxi- 
mately 165,000.  There  are  no  records  of  the  killed 
and  wounded.  North  Carolina  claims  to  have  fur- 
nished 133,905,  of  whom  42,000  were  killed  or 
wounded.  The  number  of  voters  in  North  Carolina 
at  this  time  was  115,000.  The  population  of  Vir- 
ginia, according  to  the  Census  of  1860,  was  1,596,- 
318;  of  North  Carolina,  992,622.  A  just  comparison 
demands  a  deduction  from  Virginia's  population  of 
442,014,  the  population  of  West  Virginia  (after- 
wards made  a  separate  State)  according  to  the 
Census  of  1870.  The  proportion  of  enlistments  to 
population  thus  remains  about  equal  in  Virginia  and 
North  Carolina,  approximately  I  to  7.  A  complete 
estimate  of  the  South's  contribution  in  human  values 
requires  recognition  also  of  the  Southern  men  who 
fought  on  the  Union  side.  According  to  Charles  C. 
Anderson  'Fighting  by  Southern  Federals),  "296,579 
white  soldiers  living  in  the  South  and  137,676  col- 
ored soldiers,  and  approximately  200,000  men  living 
in  the  North  that  were  born  in  the  South,  making 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

Carolina  were  in  the  beginning  opposed  to 
secession,  to  slavery,  and  to  coercion  alike. 
From  her  strategic  importance,  Virginia 
more  than  any  other  State  bore  the  brunt  of 
the  most  persistent  and  most  destructive  of 
the  hard-fought  campaigns.  Both  Virginia 
and  North  Carolina  were  settled  mainly  by 
the  same  British  stock,  many  Scotch  being 
represented  and  in  certain  localities  the 
Pennsylvania  Germans.  The  racial  quality 
throughout  was  high,  and  it  may  be  assumed 
to  have  been  about  equally  high  and  as  good 
as  the  best  in  the  United  States  or  in  the 
world,  at  the  time  of  the  outbreak  of  the  war. 
A  survey  of  the  eugenic  conditions  of  the 

634,255  Southern  soldiers,"  engaged  on  the  Union 
side.  Of  this  number  Virginia  is  said  to  have  con- 
tributed 37,791,  white  and  colored.  For  aid  in  the 
collection  of  these  data  we  are  indebted  to  Mr.  John 
S.  Patton,  Librarian,  University  of  Virginia;  Pro- 
fessor Thomas  J.  Wertenbaker,  Princeton  Univer- 
sity; and  Mr.  W.  S.  Burnley,  Assistant  Secretaryr 
Department  Confederate  Military  Records,  Rich- 
mond, Virginia. 

6 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

whole  South  would  be  a  matter  of  years  or 
of  a  lifetime.  In  a  single  summer  only  a 
preliminary  survey  could  be  made,  and  this 
within  a  very  restricted  area.  It  was  desired 
to  select  some  locality  in  a  degree  typical 
where  the  original  loss  had  been  great  and 
where  there  was  a  minimum  of  modifying  in- 
fluences, such  as  emigration,  immigration, 
and  the  rise  of  manufacturing  industries. 
For  such  purposes  we  would  seek  (i)  rela- 
tively superior  human  stock;  (2)  relatively 
heavy  loss  of  life ;  (3)  relatively  little  change  in 
social  and  economic  conditions ;  and  (4)  rela- 
tively little  of  emigration  or  of  immigration. 
Certain  parts  of  Virginia  and  of  Georgia 
seemed  to  meet  these  requirements  best. 
Hence  we  began  with  an  intensive  study  of 
small  districts  to  sift  the  evidence  of  the 
theoretically  inevitable  deterioration  due  to 
the  loss  of  a  large  portion  of  the  best  young 
blood  of  fifty  years  ago. 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

"SPOTTSYLVANIA   COUNTY 

In  attempting  to  begin  this  intensive  study 
in  Virginia  the  location  first  chosen  was  the 
war-wasted  county  of  Spottsylvania,  which 
borders  on  the  historic  rivers  of  Rappahan- 
nock  and  Rapidan,  containing  the  city  of 
Fredericksburg.  Near  this  town  is  the  scene 
of  bloody  battles  known  as  "the  Wilder- 
ness," this  including  Chancellorsville,  Spott- 
sylvania Court  House,  Salem  Church,  and 
the  "Bloody  Angle"  in  the  forest  near 
Spottsylvania.  This  county  extends  from  its 
hilly  lands,  known  as  Piedmont,  to  the  level 
river  bottoms  of  the  Tidewater  district,  and 
it  is  fairly  representative  of  both.  The  Pied- 
mont district  before  the  Civil  War  was  a 
region  of  small  farms,  largely  tilled  by  their 
owners,  while  the  larger  plantations  of  the 
Tidewater  were  worked  by  slaves.  But  the 
social  and  economic  changes  "in  this  region 
tend  to  obscure  the  biological  effects  of  the 
8 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

war,  and  these  bulk  large  in  their^modifying 
effect  on  the  results  of  the  war-waste  of  this 
harassed  region.  It  is  hard  to  value  these  fac- 
tors in  comparison,  and  it  was  necessary  to 
minimize  them  as  far  as  possible  in  order  to 
reach  any  degree  of  certainty.  In  all  that 
part  ot  Virginia  east  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  the 
best  part  of  the  human  element  was  found  in 
the  life  of  the  plantations.  The  war  wholly 
destroyed  the  plantation  life.  So  complete 
a  social  revolution  unquestionably  had  an 
enormous  temporary  effect  upon  the  appar- 
ent quality  of  the  human  stock,  by  reason  of 
its  grave  interference  with  proper  environ- 
ment for  full  development.  Sons  of  men  once 
wealthy  and  highly  educated  grew  up 
without  schooling.  Whatever  backwardness 
might  possibly  obtain  could  almost  equally 
justly  be  attributed  to  lack  of  opportunity  or 
to  deterioration  of  quality.  The  eastern  part 
of  Virginia,  in  many  respects  so  favorable  for 
our  study,  was  in  other  regards  quite  un- 
9 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

suited,  for  the  further  reason  of  a  more  severe 
industrial  devastation  than  was  suffered  by 
any  other  section  of  the  South.  Moreover, 
emigration  after  the  war  was  here  especially 
prevalent.  Biologic,  industrial,  economic, 
and  social  factors  are  so  intricately  interre- 
lated as  to  make  isolation  of  one  or  the  other 
quite  impossible;  all  these  worked  to  some 
extent  an  apparently  like  racial  effect  by  sup- 
pression of  the  best  human  stock. 

ROCKBRIDGE   COUNTY 

In  view  of  the  above  considerations,  the 
Shenandoah  Valley,  or  its  southward  exten- 
sion, the  Valley  of  Virginia  west  of  the  Blue 
Ridge,  appeared  to  furnish  the  best  point  of 
attack.  Since  the  life  here  was  mostly  that  of 
the  small  farmer,  home  conditions  were  not 
seriously  disturbed  by  the  war.  Home  "life 
after  the  conflict  remained  almost  exactly 
what  it  was  before.  There  were  no  serious 
economic  changes,  for  this  is  a  farming  region 
10 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

with  practically  no  industrialism,  and  there 
had  been  little  emigration  or  immigration. 
The  stock  in  the  Valley  of  Virginia  is  less 
English  than  east  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  being 
largely  Scotch-Irish  and  German. 

In  this  region  the  county  of  Rockbridge 
seemed  to  meet  conditions  best,  and  in  this 
county,  and  especially  in  the  county  town  of 
Lexington,  an  investigation  was  attempted. 
This  town  is  the  seat  of  the  university,  known 
now  as  Washington  and  Lee,  of  which 
Robert  E.  Lee  became  president  after  the 
war,  and  of  the  Virginia  Military  Institute, 
in  which  Thomas  J.  Jackson  ("Stonewall") 
was  a  professor.  The  people  of  this  county 
were  in  the  beginning  and  are  to  this  day 
opposed  to  disunion,  to  slavery,  and  to  co- 
ercion alike. 

COBB   COUNTY,   GEORGIA 

Considerable  work  was  also  done  in  Cobb 
County,  Georgia,  a  rural  district  on  the  line 
ii 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

of  Sherman's  march,  and  therefore  laid  waste 
during  the  war.  Most  of  our  records  from 
this  county  are  concerned  with  economic  and 
social  conditions.1 

PRELIMINARY  ASSUMPTIONS 

We  began  this  investigation  with  certain 
preliminary  assumptions  derived  from  the 
general  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  Civil 
War.  These  served  as  a  scaffolding  for  our 
work.  They  were  (i)  that  the  volunteers  re- 
presented a  better  human  element  than  the 
conscripts ;  since  these  went  first  to  the  war, 
eventually  furnishing  most  of  the  leaders, 
seeing  longer  service  and  exposed  to  greater 
risks,  they  suffered  the  greatest  loss ;  (2)  the 
conscripts  of  the  later  period  saw  shorter 
service,  incurred  less  risk,  and  thus  survived 
more  generally,  to  perpetuate  their  somewhat 
inferior  type;  (3)  there  was  a  considerable 

1  These  will  be  elsewhere  treated  by  Professor 
Krehbiel. 

12 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

body  who  were  exempted  on  account  of  phy- 
sical weakness  or  disability,  as  also  some  who 
fled  to  the  mountains,  and  thus  were  wholly 
preserved  and  bred  their  poorer  types ;  (4)  the 
third  generation  now  in  existence  comprises 
representatives  of  the  three  types :  survived 
volunteers,  survived  conscripts,  and  desert- 
ers and  exempts. 

VOLUNTEER  AND   CONSCRIPT 

If  the  war  in  this  section  produced  the  effect 
of  a  contra-selection,  then  the  three  grades 
should  still  be  evident  among  the  present 
generation,  and  there  should  be  a  relative 
preponderance  of  mediocrity.  We  were  for- 
tunate in  finding  very  complete  records  of 
the  military  companies  from  Rockbridge 
County.  These  showed  who  were  the  volun- 
teers, who  the  conscripts,  and  who  had  de- 
serted. However,  there  does  not  seem  to  exist 
anywhere  a  list  of  exemptions  for  disability. 
We  were  frequently  told  that  there  were  no 
13 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

such:  everybody  went  to  the  war,  the  weak 
and  sick  as  well  as  the  strong;  and  frequently 
the  weak  and  consumptive,  we  were  assured, 
were  greatly  improved  by  the  outdoor  life 
and  military  discipline.  Nor,  it  is  claimed, 
were  there  any  "  cowards/'  But  it  was  thus 
possible  to  compare  the  descendants  of  certain 
selected  volunteers  with  those  of  conscripts, 
and  both  with  those  of  deserters.  However, 
it  was  soon  discovered  that  our  first  assump- 
tion was  too  sweeping;  as  a  class  the  volun- 
teers were  not  notably  superior  to  the  con- 
scripts, and  for  these  reasons :  the  volunteers 
were  largely  young  men  who  had  relatively 
slight  obligatory  family  ties,  or  who  were  in 
training  in  military  schools  for  just  such  ser- 
vice. Moreover,  when  the  calls  for  volunteers 
came,  in  a  certain  family  of  several  sons,  the 
father  and  all  but  one  son  would  respond,  one 
remaining  to  care  for  the  farm  and  the 
family.  When  conscription  came  the  remain- 
ing son  also  went;  but  he  was  not  by  any 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

means  necessarily  inferior  to  his  father  or  his 
volunteer  brothers.  Again,  there  was  a  very 
considerable  body  of  good  men  who  were  op- 
posed to  war  as  a  settlement  of  political 
questions,  who  were  not  in  sympathy  with 
the  Southern  cause,  or  at  any  rate  saw  no- 
thing in  the  contest  which  appealed  to  them 
to  the  extent  of  making  them  willing  to  risk 
their  Hives.  These  men  did  not  volunteer, 
and  at  last  they  became  "conscripts."  While 
they  probably  in  many  instances  made  less 
serviceable  soldiers  by  reason  of  their  con- 
victions, they  were  nevertheless  of  good 
human  stock,  sometimes  of  the  best,  and 
their  offspring  are  of  no  lesser  quality  than 
those  of  volunteers. 

THE   DESERTER 

For  this  reason  the  distinction  between 
volunteer  and  conscript,  from  the  standpoint 
of  racial  quality,  is  largely  spurious.  The 
same  is  true  with  respect  to  the  second  as- 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

sumption,  namely,  that  deserters  were  of  in- 
ferior quality  to  the  others.  Some  of  these, , 
of  course,  fled  to  the  mountains  and  remained 
there.  It  did  not  seem  practicable  to  us  to 
attempt  to  trace  their  progeny.  Their  eu- 
genic status  thus  remains  unknown.  But  we 
possess  certain  facts  which  show  that  desert- 
ers were  at  least  not  as  a  class  cowardly  and 
racially  inferior.  In  a  certain  company  the 
names  of  five  deserters  were  recorded.  The 
captain  of  this  company  is  still  alive,  and  de- 
scribed to  us  the  quality  of  these  men  and  the 
causes  for  desertion.  In  no  case  was  the 
cause  such  as  to  indicate  inferior  quality. 
The  five  deserters  were  fully  up  to  the  average 
at  least;  only  the  pressure  or  temptation  in 
their  case  was  uncommon.  For  example, 
while  passing  through  Chambersburg,  Penn- 
sylvania, one  man  was  met  by  his  sweetheart, 
who  persuaded  him  to  leave  the  company. 
We  will  not  say  that  he  was  of  "inferior 
quality"  because  deaf  to  military  duty  when 
16 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

love  called  so  unexpectedly.  Again,  some  of 
the  superior  quality  deserted  because  they 
sympathized  more  with  the  Union  side,  or 
saw  nothing  worth  risking  life  for,  or  were 
opposed  to  war  itself  for  "conscience'  sake/' 
But  the  vast  majority  of  desertions  came  late 
in  the  war  on  the  march  from  Richmond  to 
Appomattox  Court  House,  when  most  men 
realized  that  all  hope  was  gone,  and  when 
their  duty  to  their  neglected  families  seemed 
to  have  prior  claim.  Some  of  these  desertions 
on  the  way  to  Appomattox  were  occasioned 
at  sight  of  home  or  family.  The  man  to  whom 
family  ties  make  so  overmastering  an  appeal 
is  not  of  "inferior  quality"!  In  short,  there 
being  no  "cowards"  to  mention,  all  as  a  class 
were  of  fairly  equal  quality,  volunteer,  con- 
script, and  "deserter."  Such  differences  as 
existed  lay  merely  in  circumstances  and  not 
in  innate  quality. 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

THE   MILITARY   COMPANIES 

It  is  commonly  believed  that  the  martial 
spirit  was  especially  strong  among  the  young 
men  of  the  South  in  1861,  and  that  this  fact, 
with  the  accompanying  desire  for  glory,  was 
a  large  factor  in  bringing  on  the  war.  There 
were  in  fact  many  military  companies  then 
existing,  —  a  number  much  greater  than  at 
present,  —  and  some  men  in  these  were 
doubtless  influenced  by  the  easy  glories  of  the 
Mexican  War.  The  war  song,  "Maryland/* 
calls  on 

"Ringgold's  spirit  for  the  fray: 
With  Watson's  blood  at  Monterey: 
With  fearless  Lowe  and  dashing  May";  — 

and  is  otherwise  reminiscent  of  this  unfortun- 
ate episode  in  our  history.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  such  companies  existed  in  number,  but 
mainly  among  the  young  aristocrats  of  the 
plantations  and  of  the  towns,  and  the  great 
rural  population  of  the  South  was  little  influ- 
18 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

enced  by  them.  These  companies  enlisted,  al- 
most bodily,  at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  and 
their  training  had  some  effect  in  the  early 
victories  of  the  South.  But  their  purpose,  on 
the  whole,  was  social  rather  than  military, 
and  their  influence  may  easily  be  exaggerated. 

STATISTICAL   EXACTNESS    IMPOSSIBLE 

As  we  had  expected  in  the  beginning,  it 
soon  became  evident  that  no  mathematical 
estimate  or  rigid  calculation  of  racial  loss  was 
possible.  But  it  was  still  practicable  to  secure 
approximate  results  by  less  direct  methods. 
We  took  advantage  of  every  opportunity  to 
interview  representative  men,  and  especially 
veterans  of  the  war,  on  the  questions  at  issue. 
From  hundreds  of  these,  valuable  informa- 
tion was  gleaned.  These  conversations  were 
crystallized  into  a  set  of  thirty  propositions 
which  were  one  after  another  to  be  tested. 
These  propositions,  usually  in  the  words  of 
some  thinking  veteran,  were  put  into  the 
19 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

form  of  a  questionnaire  and  sent  broadcast 
over  the  South  to  the  surviving  Confederate 
officers  and  other  men  of  intelligence,  for 
comment  and  criticism. 

ANALYSIS   OF   OPINION 

In  the  remaining  pages  we  attempt  as  a 
preliminary  step  toward  further  investiga- 
tion to  analyze  the  answers  and  comments 
of  fifty-five  of  the  answers  received,  laying 
especial  stress  on  those  who  have  been  vitally 
interested  spectators  of  the  war  itself,  as  well 
as  of  much  that  immediately  preceded  and 
all  that  has  meanwhile  transpired.  Our  best 
thanks  are  due  these  Confederate  heroes  for 
their  painstaking  efforts  to  help  us  in  our 
attempt  honestly  to  verify  the  final  and  most 
intimate  argument  against  war,  namely,  that 
it  robs  a  country  of  its  fundamental  asset,  its 
best  young  citizenship,  the  potential  ances- 
tors of  the  "thoroughbreds"  of  the  coming 
generation. 

20 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

In  the  answers  to  our  questions  there  was 
a  wealth  of  information  that  lies  outside 
the  immediate  scope  of  our  quest,  necessarily 
frequently  impassioned,  sometimes  with  nar- 
row perspective,  but  always  sincere,  frank, 
and  charitable.  We  have  thus  received  here  a 
glimpse  of  the  spirit  of  the  Old  South  such  as 
we  could  never  have  derived  from  book  or 
lecture.  One  is  most  profoundly  impressed, 
as  one  reads  these  lengthy  inspired  com- 
ments, with  the  fact  of  unutterable  loss  in  the 
slaughter  of  the  million  of  similar  souls  of 
knightly  spirits  before  they  could  leave  their 
princely  stamp  on  human  issue.  In  the  fol- 
lowing analysis  we  purposely  state  largely 
the  bare  facts,  stripped  of  all  explanatory 
detail  and  sentiment.  The  assenting  replies 
are  frequently  worded:  "true,  as  a  general 
proposition/5  or  "true,  generally  speaking/' 
By  means  of  the  longer  quotations,  selected 
from  the  more  prominent  contributors,  an  at- 
tempt is  made  also  to  present  both  sides  of 
21 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

the  argument  concerning  the  various  phases 
of  the  subject  under  discussion,  in  every  case 
indicating  the  position  held  by  the  majority. 
We  may  say  that  the  opinions  of  only  the 
obviously  thoughtful,  however  radical,  of  our 
correspondents  have  been  incorporated  in 
this  study.  The  tentative  propositions  are 
numbered  serially,  and  our  final  conclusions 
briefly  summed  up  at  the  end. 

j.  The  leading  young  men  of  the  South  were 
a  part  of  select  companies  of  militia  and 
these  companies  were  the  first  to  enlist 

From  this  statement  only  two  dissent,  and 
several  approve  with  slight  qualifications. 
One  explains  that  while  these  companies  were 
formed  of  leading  young  men,  they  neverthe- 
less did  not  contain  the  majority  of  them. 
"Not  all  or  even  a  majority  of  leading  young 
men  were  in  the  militia  companies  when  the 
war  came  on.  Most  of  them  were  engaged  in 
private  business  —  such  as  planting,  mercan- 

22 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

tile,  and  professional  pursuits,  etc.  That  class 
first  volunteered."  Another  says  that  there 
were  not  many  such  companies  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war,  —  only  six  in  North  Caro- 
lina, for  example,  —  but  were  rapidly  formed 
after  the  opening  of  the  war.  We  are  re- 
minded also  that  this  was  equally  true  of  the 
North.  Here*  however,  the  relative  propor- 
tion of  these  leading  young  men  to  the  whole 
number  of  the  populations  was  so  small  as  to 
make  a  much  less  serious  impression  upon 
future  generations.  Moreover,  in  the  North 
they  did  not  represent  so  large  a  proportion  of 
individual  families  as  in  the  South.  A  general 
comment  is  made  that,  "This  is  perhaps  true 
of  the  towns  and  cities  of  the  South;  but  the 
population  of  the  South  was  overwhelmingly 
rural,  and  in  the  country  districts  there  were 
few  organized  militia  companies  (correspond- 
ing to  the  National  Guard  of  to-day) .  In  the 
country,  the  volunteers  came  from  the  unor- 
ganized militia,  without  regard  to  military 
23 


WAITS  AFTERMATH 

training  or  social  position.  Speaking  in  gen- 
eral terms,  the  infantry  volunteers  came  in 
largest  part  from  the  non-slaveholding  class, 
while  the  cavalry  commands  were  recruited 
largely  from  the  slaveholding  class  —  men 
who  were  able  to  equip  themselves  for  mounted 
service.  However,  there  were  many  cases 
where  horses  were  given  by  men  of  wealth  to 
cavalrymen  who  were  unable  to  mount 
themselves. 

2.  The  flower  of  the  people  went  into  the  war 
at  the  beginning,  and  of  these  a  large  part 
died  before  the  end 

This  thesis  received  unanimous  assent. 
One  contributor  places  the  deaths  at  forty 
per  cent  of  the  enlistment.  The  relative  seri- 
ousness from  a  racial  standpoint  of  so  great  a 
war  mortality  depends  upon  whether  it  repre- 
sented a  large  or  small  percentage  of  the  total 
male  portion  of  individual  families.  The  per- 
centage was  frequently  very  large;  in  some 
24 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

instances  practically  total.  For  example,  the 

family  of  D (Virginia)  consisted  of  five 

sons,  all  of  whom  went  to  the  war.  Four  of 
these  were  killed  and  one  died  of  typhoid 
fever  directly  after  the  war.  One  had  married 
and  had  one  child  and  one  grandchild,  both 
females,  both  now  dead.  A  Georgia  family  of 
six  sons  lost  three  in  the  war.  One  of  the  sur- 
vivors left  a  large  family,  but  a  son  born  dur- 
ing the  war  has  "always  been  a  weakling 
physically  —  the  'runt'  of  the  family."  This 
son  attributes  his  weakness  to  the  damaged 
vitality  of  his  father  by  reason  of  the  war, 
ch  left  him  invalided  the  remainder  of  his 

life.  A  Virginia  family  of  G contributed 

seven  soldiers  (brothers  or  cousins),  five  of 
whom  were  killed  and  the  other  two  wounded. 

Mr.  N had  thirty  kinsmen  in  the  war. 

About  one  quarter  of  these  were  killed.  He 
had  also  three  brothers  in  the  army,  two  of 
whom  were  killed.  "About  twenty  per  cent 
of  the  first  men  enlisted  pulled  through  to  the 
25 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

end.  In  each  company  most  of  the  men  were 
kin  and  recruited  from  their  kinfolk."  "  When 

the  war  began  Mr.  C (of  superb  stock) 

was  a  lad  of  nineteen.  Of  twenty-six  officers 
of  the  battalion  he  is  now  the  sole  survivor. 
That  class  of  people  is  bound  to  disappear. 
But  all  that  did  not  take  to  drink  have  done 
well  since  the  war/'  A  certain  Georgia  com- 
pany of  infantry  numbering  one  hundred  and 
nine  members,  the  best  blood  of  Georgia,  suf- 
fered a  fifty  per  cent  loss  including  two  cap- 
tains. The  University  of  Virginia  went  into 
the  war  almost  as  a  body,  and  suffered  a 
heavy  mortality.  Of  the  one  hundred  men 
who  went  from  Liberty  Hall  (now  Washing- 
ton and  Lee  University)  only  three  now  sur- 
vive. Of  ninety  men  in  a  certain  company 
every  one  of  them  was  hit  in  the  battle  of 
Gettysburg.  During  the  war  only  three  old 
men  and  boys  under  sixteen  were  left  in 

F ,  A County.  Of  the  students  of  the 

University  of  North  Carolina  between  1850 
26 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

and  1862,  eight  hundred  and  forty-two,  or 
fifty-seven  per  cent,  were  in  the  Confederate 
army,  three  hundred  and  twelve,  or  thirty- 
four  per  cent,  were  killed  or  died  in  service. 
A  certain  captain  tells  us  that  the  regiment 
to  which  his  company  belonged  "contained 
the  best  young  men  the  country  afforded. 
The  great  bulk  of  these  were  lost.  Just  as 
soon  as  we  lost  that  type  of  man  our  cause 
was  lost.  These  men  could  not  be  replaced/' 
In  consequence  of  the  reversed  selection 
which  ensued,  "the  young  men  of  to-day  are 
not  of  the  same  caliber  and  high  type  as  those 
of  Civil  War  days/' 

"Certainly/'  remarks  a  contributor,  "but 
the  'flower  of  the  people'  do  not  by  any 
means  represent  the  most  desirable  class  either 
from  the  point  of  view  of  eugenics  or  from  the 

int  of  view  of  economics.  No  one  doubts, 
.owever,  that  it  is  to  the  'flower  of  the 
eople '  that  we  must  look  for  advancement  in 

e  arts  and  sciences,  and  for  the  advance- 
27 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

ment  in  general  racial  culture.  An  aristo- 
cratic class  is  the  continually  vanishing  pre- 
cipitate from  the  solution  represented  by  the 
great  mass  of  humanity.  As  the  families 
which  compose  the  aristocratic  class  disap- 
pear, new  families  from  the  grades  beneath 
continually  rise  up  and  take  their  places. 
The  children  of  the  aristocratic  classes  are 
few  in  number,  more  or  less  weak,  and  often 
defective  physically,  averaging  about  twenty- 
five  per  cent  less  in  weight  at  birth  than  the 
children  of  'the  people/  with  small  and  slen- 
der bones,  small  hands  and  feet,  almost  al- 
ways defective  dentition,  etc.,  though  power- 
ful mentally;  and  an  abnormal  percentage  is 
female ;  the  males  possess  a  very  high  degree 
of  sterility.  I  cannot  see  how  any  race  can  be 
more  than  temporarily  affected  in  cultural 
development  by  the  entire  removal  of  its  aris- 
tocratic class ;  in  two  or  three  generations  it 
replaces  itself  from  the  remaining  elements  of 
the  population/'  It  must  be  objected,  how- 
28 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

ever,  that  the  "eudemic"  doctrine,  or  drift 
attitude,  expounded  in  the  last  quotation, 
entirely  ignores  the  hereditary  aspect  of  the 
civically  significant  and  valuable  human 
qualities. 

3.  War  took  only  the  physically  fit;  the  physi- 
cally unfit  remained  behind 

This  thesis  failed  to  elicit  assent  from  seven 
contributors.  Three  desire  some  qualifica- 
tions. One  suggests  the  substitution  of 
"chiefly"  for  "only."  Thus  modified,  it 
would  probably  be  unanimously  approved. 
Another  suggests  that  there  should  be  added 
"also  the  physically  unfit,  but  morally  fit." 
In  short,  in  certain  counties  everybody  be- 
tween the  ages  of  sixteen  and  sixty  enlisted 
during  the  last  years  of  the  war.  "Partly 
true,"  says  one;  "before  the  war  had  closed, 
all  classes  of  people  were  participating  in  it. 
The  junior  reserves  had  been  called  out  and 
many  boys  between  sixteen  and  twenty  years 
29 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

of  age  from  families  of  all  kinds  lost  their 
lives/'  "Owing  to  the  exemptions  provided 
by  the  conscript  laws  passed  by  the  Confeder- 
ate Congress  there  were  many  who  were 
physically  fit  for  military  service  who  re- 
mained behind  —  for  illustration,  those  who 
owned  or  controlled  a  certain  number  of 
able-bodied  slaves.  Hence  the  frequent  asser- 
tion made  in  the  South  by  the  non-exempt 
that  it  was  'the  rich  man's  war  and  the  poor 
man's  fight/" 

4.  Conscripts,  though  in  many  cases  the  equd 
of  volunteers,  were  on  ike  average  inferior 
to  the  latter  both  in  physical  and  moral 
qualities  and  made  poorer  soldiers 

This  fails  of  approval  by  only  six.  A  num- 
ber stress  moral  inferiority,  but  deny  any 
physical  difference.  We  are  also  informed 
that  there  were  no  "conscript  companies/' 
As  conscripts  arrived  they  were  apportioned 
among  volunteer  and  seasoned  companies. 
30 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

That  the  conscripts  frequently  made  poorer 
soldiers  is  generally  admitted.  But  the  rea- 
sons given  are  various.  The  more  important 
are  that  they  had  little  or  no  enthusiasm,  fre- 
quently feeling  that  they  were  fighting  for  the 
perpetuation  of  a  condition  which  was  bane- 
ful to  them  as  small  farmers.  Moreover,  they 
were  more  largely  married  men,  and  in  conse- 
quence more  discontented  away  from  home. 
Good  soldiery  is  as  largely  a  spiritual  as  a 
physical  matter.  The  statement  that  "the 
men  who  did  not  go  into  the  war  and  had  to 
be  conscripted  were  the  worst  the  South  had" 
seems  a  little  too  strong.  The  comments  are 
also  made  that  "conscripts,  being  of  a  lower 
type  than  the  volunteers,  undoubtedly  pos- 
sessed a  higher  average  of  fertility  and  were 
therefore  of  value  in  providing  in  subsequent 
generations  the  laborers  and  tradesmen  upon 
which  the  economic  strength  of  any  commun- 
ity ultimately  depends.  You  must  not  lose 
sight  of  the  fact  that  the  conscript  regiments 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

were  not  nearly  so  well  officered  as  the  volun- 
teer regiments,  which  accounts  for  some  of 
the  difference  between  them.  It  takes  first 
class  officers  to  drive  conscripts,  while  almost 
any  one  can  lead  volunteers";  and,  "Many 
men  of  family  who  did  not  volunteer  for  ser- 
vice, but  afterwards  fell  within  the  provisions 
of  the  conscript  laws,  were  in  every  sense  the 
equals  of  the  earlier  volunteers,  the  young 
men  without  families,  and  perhaps  after  their 
enforced  enlistment  made  just  as  good  sol- 
diers." 

5.  Considerable  numbers  of  men  fled  to  the 
hills  and  other  places  to  escape  conscrip- 
tion ("bushmen"),  and  others  deserted 
from  the  ranks  and  joined  them 

This  proposition  received  the  unqualified 
approval  of  less  than  half.  The  consensus  of 
opinion  is  that  the  number  of  deserters  was 
negligibly  small.  The  admission  is  made, 
however,  by  a  conscript  officer,  that  it  is 
32 


6.  The  volunteer  companies,  having  enlisted 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  lost  more  heav- 
ily than  the  companies  of  conscripts  which 
entered  the  war  later.  ("  Those  who  'fit* 
the  most  survived  the  least.99)  The  deserters 
suffered  practically  no  loss  of  life,  however 
much  inconvenience 

This  proposition  was  denied  by  only  one, 
and  questioned  by  another.  The  latter  re- 
marks that  it  "  looks  reasonable,  but  will  not 
bear  verification.  The  men  who  were  caught 

33 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

in  exposed  places  of  battle  suffered."  The 
last  sentence  of  the  thesis  cannot  be  ques- 
tioned. But  when  one  recalls  the  carnage  at 
the  foot  of  Marye's  Heights,  in  the  Bloody 
Angle  at  Spottsylvania  Court  House,  and  at 
the  battle  of  the  Crater, —  as  well  as  the  fact 
that  the  heavier  fighting  took  place  in  the 
later  years  of  the  war,  and  that  there  were  no 
"conscript  companies,"  —  it  needs  qualifica- 
tion to  an  extent  robbing  it  of  most  of  its  sig- 
nificance. As  to  the  original  secessionists, 
few  of  whom  went  to  the  war,  it  is  main- 
tained that  only  one  or  two  made  good  sol- 
diers. "They  were  mostly  politicians  or 
simply  agitators."  Still  their  children  are 
"just  as  good  as  those  of  the  volunteers. 
Many  of  these  were  professional  men,  for 
which  account  they  were  excused  from  ser- 
vice. Also  most  of  them  were  close  to  the  age 
of  exemption.  As  a  rule  the  laboring  class 
made  extremely  good  soldiers,  and  contrib- 
uted few  'bushmen/  Conscripts  were  gener- 
34 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

[y  men  of  large  families  fully  dependent 
upon  them  for  support.  They  were  perfectly 
loyal,  but  did  not  feel  that  they  could  leave 
their  families.  All  men  who  went  to  the  war 
were  equally  good." 

From  a  different  section  we  have  the  fol- 
lowing from  the  grandson  of  the  leading  citi- 
zen before  the  war:  "G at  the  outbreak 

of  the  war  was  a  rich,  intelligent,  and  aristo- 
cratic place,  which  cannot  be  said  of  the  place 
to-day.  All  the  families  were  broken  up  after 
the  war,  either  through  death  or  emigration. 
Young  men  had  to  go  elsewhere  to  make  a 
living.  The  best  men  were  killed  in  the  war. 
These  men  volunteered  and  were  exposed  to 
dangers  of  all  sorts.  The  poorer  types  had  to 
be  conscripted  and  most  of  them  took  such 
good  care  of  themselves  in  time  of  danger 
that  they  returned.  The  present  generation 
is  not  up  to  the  Civil  War  standard.  There 
were  twenty  or  twenty-five  young  men  of  my 
generation  who  distinguished  themselves  and 
35 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

were  a  credit  to  the  community  and  the  na- 
tion. I  can  think  of  only  three  of  the  present 
generation  who  have  brought  credit  to  them- 
selves or  the  community.  The  same  can  be 
said  of  M ,  a  place  with  which  I  am  fa- 
miliar." It  is  further  urged  that  "This  dis- 
tinction between  volunteer  and  conscript 
companies  is  hardly  justified.  Most  men  who 
were  forced  into  the  service  by  the  operation 
of  the  conscript  laws  took  time  by  the  fore- 
lock "and  enlisted  in  previously  existing 
volunteer  commands." 

7.  The  result  of  this  was  that  the  men  of  the 
highest  character  and  quality  bore  the  brunt 
of  the  war  and  lost  more  heavily  than  men 
of  inferior  quality.  This  produced  a  change 
in  the  balance  of  society  by  reducing  the 
percentage  of  the  better  types  without  a  cor- 
responding reduction  of  the  less  desirable 
types;  a  condition  which  was  projected  into 
the  next  generation  because  the  inferiors 

36 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

lived  to  have  progeny  and  the  others  did 
not1 


This  receives  a  bare  majority  of  "ayes/5 
In  view  of  what  was  said  under  number  6,  the 
criticism,  "too  general,"  and,  "statement  a 
little  too  strong/5  seems  justifiable.  However, 
the  following  by  a  soldier  of  exceptional  intel- 
ligence and  high  social  and  business  attain- 
ment deserves  quoting:  "The  best  men  were 
killed  off  by  the  war,  causing  a  deterioration 
of  human  stock,  but  it  is  impossible  to  tell 
the  extent  of  this  deterioration.  The  fellows 
who  held  back  raised  inferior  stock.  No  de- 
serter of  the  Army  of  Virginia  has  ever 

1  Thus  in  the  Liberty  Hall  —  Washington  and 
Lee  University  —  Volunteers,  —  a  company  of  the 
Stonewall  Brigade,  —  from  Lexington,  Virginia, 
forty-eight  of  the  seventy-six  who  were  alumni  of 
Washington  and  Lee  University  lost  their  lives  or 
were  seriously  wounded  in  the  thirty-two  battles 
from  Manassas  to  Appomattox.  Of  the  one  hundred 
and  six  non-alumni  in  the  same  company  forty  men 
were  lost. 

37 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

amounted  to  anything.  Twenty  years  after 
the  war,  the  men  who  had  fought  through  the 
war  had  been  helped  to  their  feet  again,  but 
not  by  the  men  who  had  stayed  out  of  the 
war.  The  only  decent  thing  in  the  South  is 
that  which  came  out  of  the  Southern  army." 
Another  says,  the  best  of  to-day  are  the  de- 
scendants of  the  aristocrats  who  adapted 
themselves  to  changed  conditions.  And  an- 
other asks,  "What  shall  we  say  about  the 
large  number  of  people  in  Virginia,  Tennes- 
see, Kentucky,  Maryland,  and  other  States, 
who  were  opposed  to  the  war  from  principle, 
and  refused  to  take  up  arms  against  their 
'flag'  until  they  were  drafted?  No  "aristo- 
crats5 on  earth  are  their  superiors.  They  are 
themselves  the  real  aristocrats."  It  is  ob- 
jected that  the  statement  is  "hardly  justifi- 
able. It  was  notorious  that  the  cavalry 
commands,  recruiting  largely  from  the  'best 
blood'  of  the  South,  suffered  less  in  propor- 
tion to  numbers  than  the  infantry  commands, 

38 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

made  up  in  largest  part  of  those  not  equally 
favored  by  fortune/' 

8.  "Eighty  per  cent  of  the  best  blood  of  S 

was  lost  in  the  war!9  —  "/  believe  in  blood 

I  in  men  as  I  do  in  horses" 
Here  the  sentiment  wins  full  assent.  One 
clines,  however,  to  accept  it  as  true  of  men 
in  the  same  degree  as  of  horses,  "except  as 
blood  determines  environment  and  tradi- 
tions/' A  majority  deny  that  the  percentage 
of  loss  was  as  high  as  eighty  per  cent.  The 
highest  admitted  among  the  objectors  is 
sixty  per  cent.  One  suggests  that  the  sen- 
tence should  read  "constructive  ability" 
rather  than  "best  blood/'  "On  the  whole,  it 
is  no  doubt  true  that  the  upper  classes  of 
Southern  society  suffered  losses  of  dispropor- 
tionate severity  in  warfare.  It  must,  how- 
ever, not  be  forgotten  that  the  constitution 
of  Southern  society,  as  of  other  aristocratic 
organizations  in  history,  was  largely  artifi- 
39 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

cial.  I  do  not  say  with  certainty  that  the 
Southern  aristocracy  had  an  influence  be- 
yond its  merits.  But  I  think  it  was  true  to  a 
considerable  extent  that  it  contained  ele- 
ments no  longer  worthy  of  their  influential 
position.  Slavery  was  injurious  to  practical 
efficiency,  and  as  a  result  of  it  many  sons  of 
well-to-do  families  were  lazy  and  dissipated, 
drinking  being  prevalent  throughout  the 
South.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was  in  the 
lower  strata  of  Southern  society  a  great 
amount  of  native  ability  suffering  to  be  liber- 
ated, and  to  a  large  extent  this  was  liberated, 
not  so  much  by  the  war  as  by  the  social  reor- 
ganization which  ensued  upon  it.  In  that 
respect  the  war  had  somewhat  the  effect 
which  the  period  of  the  Revolution  and  of 
Napoleon  had  in  France,  the  'carriere 
ouverte  aux  talents'.  The  political  control 
of  the  South  during  the  past  twenty  years 
seems  to  have  been  mainly  in  the  hands  of 
persons  whose  fathers  or  grandfathers  were 
49 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

of  the  class  that  had  one  slave  apiece  or  no 
slaves.  Often  they  have  been  coarse  but  vig- 
orous persons,  though  not  always  with  capa- 
city for  growth  nor  with  a  generally  high 
character.  Now  in  industrial  life  the  leader- 
ship of  such  persons  has  been  much  more 
beneficial,  I  imagine,  than  would  have  been 
that  of  the  scions  of  the  old  aristocracy,  who 
often  seem  rather  helpless  persons,  with 
more  refinement  than  vigor.  These  things  of 
which  I  have  spoken  are  not  so  much  results 
of  war  as  of  this  particular  war  and  the  crum- 
bling of  the  old  aristocracy."  A  critic's  com- 
ment is  that  "the  idle  and  the  thriftless 
—  the  ne'er-do-wells  —  volunteered  quite 
as  promptly  as  the  'bloods';  and  bullets 
and  camp  fevers  were  no  respecters  of 
persons." 

p.  "  We  can  only  judge  of  those  who  died  by  the 
success  of  others"  —  "We  should  have 
accomplished  a  great  deal  more  in  these  fifty 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

years  if  we  could  have  had  the  help  of  the 
men  who  fell  in  the  war" 

This  thesis  evoked  much  comment.  It  gets 
a  bare  majority  of  affirmative  replies.  One 
calls  it "  true  almost  beyond  comprehension  " ; 
another  disagrees  utterly,  maintaining  that 
"war  stimulated  to  better  manhood/'  One 
remarks  that  "no  man  can  fail  to  believe  in 
blood  who  has  lived  fifty  years ";  another 
holds  that  the  Confederate  martyrs  "did 
more  good  for  the  South  by  their  heroic  death 
in  the  cause  of  a  great  principle  than  they 
would  have  done  if  alive";  and  still  another, 
"the  force  of  their  example  has  done  won- 
ders." 

Half  of  the  best  were  killed.  The  South 
suffered  immensely  from  the  weakening  of 
the  breed,  but  only  meager  records  were  pre- 
served and  no  authoritative  estimate  can  yet 
be  made.  Virginia  had  165,000  men  in  the 
field;  of  these  only  10,000  are  now  living. 
42 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

There  is  no  record  of  the  lost,  "we  can  only 
judge  of  those  who  died  by  the  success  of 
others/'  "There  is,  of  course,  a  good  deal  of 
nonsense  about  this  talk  of  blood,  in  the 
South,  as  elsewhere/'  we  are  warned.  "  In  the 
North  and  in  the  South  alike,  with  very  few 
exceptions,  the  American  nation  in  its  first  two 
centuries  was  composed  by  transplanting  to 
this  country  a  large  section  of  the  European 
middle  class,  with  a  little  of  the  dregs  and 
almost  none  of  the  aristocracy.1  The  plain 
people  rose  to  be  aristocrats  in  the  South  by 
acquiring  property  of  one  sort,  just  as  in  more 
recent  years  they  have  risen  to  be  '  society 
people'  in  the  North  by  acquiring  property 
of  another  sort ;  nevertheless,  it  in  many  ways 
does  people  good  to  suppose  that  they  are  of 
high  descent  when  they  are  not.  I  am  accus- 
tomed to  say  to  the  young  people  around  me 

1  See  Patrician  and  Plebeian  in  Virginia,  by 
Professor  Thomas  J.  Wertenbaker:  Michie  Co., 
Charlottesville,  Virginia,  1912. 

43 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

that  the  American  nation  consists  of  two 
sorts  of  people,  those  who  are  descended 
from  lower  middle-class  English  and  are 
aware  of  it,  and  those  who  are  descended 
from  lower  middle-class  English  people  and 
are  not  aware  of  it.  The  latter  feel  much  bet- 
ter." One  admits  that  "the  standard  of  the 
younger  generation  is  not  up  to  that  of  the 
war,  but  this  fact  is  not  necessarily  charge- 
able to  the  war.  There  is  undoubted  truth  in 
the  theory.  The  percentage  of  loss  among 
the  higher  classes  was  greater  than  among 
the  lower  and  there  has  been  a  lowering  of 
the  level  of  manhood.  However,  the  change 
is  largely  due  to  changed  economic  conditions. 
It  is  impossible  to  measure  the  loss  of  these 
young  men."  "There  is  only  one  opinion  on 
this  question.  It  is  true  and  we  would  have 
recuperated  more  rapidly.  Their  deaths  are 
an  irreparable  loss  to  the  South."  "Of 
course,  in  every  sparsely  settled  country  — 
where  the  point  of  'diminishing  returns'  has 
44 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

not  been  reached  —  the  loss  of  life  told  more 
seriously  upon  economic  progress  than  in  an 
older  region  more  densely  populated." 

10.  "Widows  of  soldiers  suffered  great  hard- 
ships and  most  of  them  never  remarried; 
the  death-rate  among  them  was  unusually 
high  for  the  first  ten  or  fifteen  years  after 
the  war" 

This  is  denied  by  a  sole  contributor,  who 
calls  it  "romancing."  Several  question  its 
strict  accuracy,  suggesting  that  "a  large  per- 
centage" or  "many"  would  more  nearly  ex- 
press the  actual  fact  than  "most."  "There 
can  be  little  doubt  but  that  the  stress  and 
strain  of  war,  with  its  untold  privations, 
told  heavily  in  shortening  the  lives  of 


women." 


II.  "  The  sweethearts  of  many  a  victim  of  the 
war  never  married;  with  the  elevation  of  the 
middle  class  and  the  lack  of  men  of  their 
45 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

own  class  many  girls  of  the  aristocracy 
married  men  beneath  them  in  station" 

This  receives  less  hearty  approval,  only  a 
fifty  per  cent  affirmation.  It  would  undoubt- 
edly have  met  better  success  if  "some"  were 
substituted  for  "many."  However,  the  chief 
dissatisfaction  seems  to  be  with  the  con- 
cluding clause.  The  comments  are,  "imag- 
inary"; "very  few  Southern  women  mar- 
ried 'down'";  and,  "station  is  not  synony- 
mous with  strain."  "It  is  true  that  women 
of  culture,  born  of  the  planter  class,  have 
married  men  who  came  up  from  the  non- 
slave-owning  class  —  strong  men  who  bal- 
anced the  vigor  that  comes  from  manual 
labor  on  the  farm  against  the  culture  of  the 
upper  class."  However,  after  due  allowance 
for  qualifications  the  general  approval  of  the 
last  two  propositions  answers  the  frequent 
criticism  of  the  position  that  war  works  "re- 
versed selection  "  through  the  destruction  of  a 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

large  quota  of  superior  males,  namely,  that 
this  takes  no  account  of  the  females  of  similar 
quality  who  are  subject  to  no  such  destruc- 
tion: these  frequently  do  not  marry,  or  are 
compelled  to  marry  poorer  strains.  The  lat- 
ter result,  however,  is  far  from  a  racially  un- 
mitigated evil,  regarded  in  a  broad  and  demo- 
cratic sense. 

12.  "  The  farmers  are  now  of  a  lower  type  than 
before  the  war"  * 

This  proposition  is  very  emphatically 
denied  by  many,  and  objected  to  by  most.  It 
is  undoubtedly  mistakenly  worded.  I  gather 
from  the  replies  and  comments  that  the  state- 
ment is  true  only  if  comparison  is  implied  be- 
tween the  ante-bellum  planters  and  pres- 
ent-day farmers.  If  actual  farmers  are  meant 
to  be  compared,  there  remains  still  only  a 
meager  assent.  "The  "poor  whites'  as  a  rule 
are  making  good.  They,  too,  are  largely  good 

1  Opinion  of  a  Virginia  attorney. 

47 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

stuff.  Their  faults  are  largely  those  of  lack  of 
education.  With  proper  training  they  de- 
velop efficiency.  The  middle  class  in  general 
are  doing  better  than  the  sons  of  slavehold- 
ers." We  are  told  also,  "This  is  an  error. 
The  small  farmer  of  to-day  is  immeasurably 
superior  to  the  small  farmer  of  the  old  regime 
—  and  as  for  the  "planters/  perhaps  honors 
are  fairly  even  between  those  of  the  two 


eras/' 


13.  "All  over  ike  State  the  class  of  men  attend- 
ing courts  does  not  measure  up  in  intelli- 
gence or  in  ideals  with  those  before  the 


war" 


This  proposition  is  left  untouched  by  a 
number.  It  wins  assent  from  about  half.  It 
is  questioned  by  some  ;  vehemently  denied  by 
others  and  as  emphatically  affirmed  by  a 
few.  One  man  who  was  on  the  bench  for 
thirteen  years  remarks  that  there  is  "no 

1  Opinion  of  a  Virginia  judge. 

48 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

question  of  the  truth  of  this."  "I  think/' 
says  another,  "that  any  judge  in  New  Eng- 
land would  unqualifiedly  make  exactly  the 
same  statement,  and  so  would  any  of  the 
older  magistrates  in  British  Guiana  or  in  the 
West  Indies/'  "Far  below  it,"  says  a  third. 
"My  observation  as  a  lawyer  for  many  years 
has  caused  me  to  remark  about  it." 

14.  "  The  public  men  of  the  South  do  not  mea- 
sure up  to  those  of  old  times" 

This  statement  is  given  lengthy  considera- 
tion in  the  comments.  It  is  approved  by 
about  half,  in  some  instances  unreservedly, 
in  others  with  qualifications.  The  most  fre- 
quent reply  is  that  the  same  is  true  of  the 
entire  country,  "commercialism  absorbing 
the  nation's  strength  that  formerly  went  to 
public  life."  In  proof  of  this  proposition,  one 
recalls  the  fact  that  the  South  furnished  nine 
out  of  the  fifteen  ante-bellum  Presidents. 
One  accounts  for  the  Southern  dearth  of 
49 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

public  men  of  towering  ability  on  the  basis  of 
negro  suffrage ;  and  one  reminds  us  of  a  lack 
of  superior  statesmen  throughout  the  world ; 
e.g.,  England.  An  explanation  of  the  appar- 
ent fact  is  attempted  by  several  on  the 
ground  that  there  are  now  so  many  public 
men  of  cardinal  ability  as  to  render  their 
existence  commonplace ;  again,  that  the  stim- 
ulus for  superior  efforts  is  lacking,  and  that  if 
the  occasion  demanded,  giants  would  loom 
up  from  among  the  "common  people/'  The 
war  had  little  to  do  with  "this  numerical 
degradation  of  public  men/'  according  to  a 
Tennessee  correspondent.  "It  is  the  moral 
depravity  of  the  whole  body  politic ;  a  univer- 
sal subsidence  of  the  morals  of  the  electorate, 
produced  by  the  money  of  the  vastly  rich. 
This  is  true  of  the  whole  country  from  Maine 
to  California,  and  from  the  Lakes  to  the 
Gulf." 

"  Intelligence  is  not  identical  with  mental 
superiority,  and  social  standing  certainly  is 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

not  so,"  says  another.  "There  are  a  number 
of  assertions  that  in  the  Civil  War  the  better 
men  were  killed  and  the  worse  survived.  In- 
asmuch as  in  most  wars  losses  by  exposure, 
disease,  and  neglected  wounds  amount,  all 
told,  to  far  more  than  losses  by  immediate 
destruction  in  battle,  there  is  a  very  im- 
portant way  in  which  the  strong  tend  to  sur- 
vive and  the  weak  to  perish.  Those  who  at 
bottom  have  the  best  constitutions  are  less 
likely  to  be  carried  away  by  other  influences 
than  the  bullets  that  kill  or  mortally  injure. 
Assertions  as  to  whiskey  rather  favor  the 
idea  that  an  undesirable  element  was  carried 
away  when  the  highest  class  perished  in 
greater  numbers  than  the  middle  class." 
"The  public  men  of  the  South,  judging  from 
the  pages  of  history  alone,  are  superior  to  the 
"hot-headed/  so-called  aristocrats  before  the 
war.  The  public  men  of  the  South  are  the 
equal  of  the  public  men  of  any  other  section 
of  the  country."  "  Men  like  John  T.  Morgan, 

Si 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

of  Alabama,  L.  Q.  C.  Lamar,  of  Mississippi, 
and  Ben  H.  Hill,  of  Georgia,  were  the  peers 
of  any  group  of  ante-bellum  Southern  lead- 
ers ;  but  it  is  true  that  they  belonged  as  much 
to  the  old  regime  as  the  new,  for  they  grew 
to  manhood  before  the  War  between  the 
States."  Compared  with  those  of  fifty  years 
ago,  the  public  men  of  to-day  are  inferior, 
according  to  one  correspondent,  "in  intelli- 
gence, broad  views,  high  sense  of  honor,  char- 
ity, and  capacity  to  conduct  governmental 
affairs."  "There  are  men  in  the  South  to-day 
as  wise  and  efficient  as  ever  in  former  times, 
but  the  number  of  strong  men  is  relatively 
fewer." 

75.  "After  the  war  the  best  of  the  middle  class 
— farm  managers  and  commercial  men  — 
rose  to  equality  with  the  remnants  of  the  old 
aristocracy" 

This  is  generally  approved,  though  em- 
phatically denied  by  four.    One  comments 

52 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

thus:  "They  did  not  have  to  rise;  they  sim- 
ply asserted  themselves."  "Why  should  n't 
they?"  asks  another,  "they  represent  the 
class  from  which  the  aristocracy  had  been 
continually  replenished;  the  process  of  re- 
plenishment was  temporarily  accelerated, 
that  is  all."  "There  were  many  cases  where 
the  non-slave-owning  'overseers'  became  the 
owners  of  the  plantations  which  they  had 
formerly  superintended  for  the  slave-owner," 
explains  another.  "They  understood  the 
management  of  labor  better  than  the  former 
owner,  and  grew  rich,  in  some  cases,  as  the 
former  owner  became  impoverished." 

16.  "  The  Civil  War  destroyed  the  cream  and 
stirred  up  the  dregs" 

This  is  not  approved.  Many  remark  that 
it  is  "too  sweeping"  or  "too  strong."  This  is 
undoubtedly  true.  It  is  denied  by  a  number 
of  exceptional  thoughtfulness  and  of  special 
opportunity  for  becoming  conversant  with 
53 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

the  facts.  There  is  probably  more  than  a 
grain  of  truth  in  the  assertion  that  "the  "poor 
whites'  of  the  South  have  never  had  justice 
done  them.  They  are  much  better  raw  ma- 
terial than  is  generally  supposed/'  "The 
writer  of  the  above  [i.e.,  statement  number 
16]  is  an  extremist/'  is  the  comment  of  one, 
"and  the  true  historian  would  do  well  to  avoid 
taking  him  seriously." 

77.  "  The  men  who  got  themselves  killed  were 
the  better  men"  ^ 

"True,  good  men  of  all  classes  were  killed, 
but  no  one  class  had  a  monopoly  of  getting 
killed." 

18.  "The  present  deterioration  of  human 
qualities  is  due  to  lack  of  schooling  rather 
than  to  impoverishment  of  blood" 

As  to  this,  few  admit  any  deterioration  in 

1  Compare  with  this  the  old  French  proverb,  — 
"A  la  guerre  ce  sont  toujours  les  memes  qui  se  font 


54 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

human  quality.  Several  attribute  it  equally 
to  impoverishment  of  blood  and  inferior  kind 
of  schooling.  One,  a  Confederate  soldier  and 
still  an  influential  teacher  of  youth,  debits 
deterioration  to  the  overthrow  of  political 
ideals  and  the  loss  of  family  and  state 
"pride."  Another,  of  similar  qualifications 
and  position,  attributes  it  to  "too  much 
schooling  by  girls."  Still  another  blames 
"bad  newspapers."  But  the  majority  would 
apparently  more  probably  subscribe  to  the 
opinion  that  "the  Southern  youth  is  better, 
stronger,  freer,  and  more  aggressive  than 
ever" ;  and  that  "the  standards  are  as  high  as 
ever  in  the  world's  history."  A  certain  wo- 
man who  has  been  an  intelligent  spectator  of 
events  in  Virginia  for  the  past  sixty  years, 
admits  a  degeneration,  physically,  intellect- 
ually, and  morally,  but  attributes  it  to  the 
demoralization  of  the  home,  following  the 
breaking-up  of  plantation  life.  "There  has 
been  no  deterioration  on  the  average"  main- 
55 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

tains  one,  "while  there  has  been  more  than  a 
corresponding  gain  in  the  masses/' 

19.  "Loss  of  courage  in  face  of  financial 
ruin  was  a  greater  damage  than  loss  of 
blood" 

This  is  unanimously  denied,  questioned,  or 
very  materially  qualified.  One  will  assent  if 
the  word  "financial"  is  changed  to  "consti- 
tutional/' "  Loss  of  spirit "  is  only  considered 
a  very  temporary  influence.  The  most  that 
is  granted  is  that  it  was  a  certain  small  factor. 
The  general  opinion  seems  to  be  that  "the 
result  of  the  war  was  only  to  stimulate  the 
people  of  the  South  to  make  more  of  them- 
selves ;  they  met  the  situation  strongly  and 
nobly/'  Nevertheless,  one  remarks:  "This 
was  the  prevailing  sentiment.  I  have  known 
good  men  to  take  to  drink,  give  up  all  efforts 
and  die  from  trouble  at  their  misfortunes, 
saying,  'All  is  lost  —  life  is  a  burden/' 

56 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

"Many  of  the  planter  class  could  not  recover 
from  the  blow  dealt  by  the  upheaval  in  the  in- 
dustrial system  in  which  they  were  bred ;  but 
the  above  statement  appears  too  strong/'  is 
still  another  comment. 

20.  "One  element  of  deterioration  came  from 
the  people  of  the  North  who  for  commercial 
reasons  sought  the  conquered  districts" 

This  is  warmly  approved  by  a  few.  By 
most,  the  "carpet-bag"  influence  is  evalu- 
ated as  "very  temporary"  and  of  "no  im- 
portance." "Here  again  we  get  a  grain  of 
truth,  but  it  is  a  half-truth.  There  was  a 
class  of  people  who  came  from  the  North 
whose  presence  was  then,  and  has  continued 
to  be,  a  blessing  to  the  country.  The  one  great 
mistake  of  all,  and  the  one  which  has  done 
more  to  affect  the  South  in  every  way,  was 
the  outrageous  treatment  of  the  people  by 
the  '  carpet-baggers '  and  the  fanatics.  The 
giving  of  the  ballot  without  qualification  or 
57 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

preparation  to  the  negroes  was  a  blunder 
which  has  deepened  into  a  crime.  The  negro 
should  have  been  made  to  earn  his  citizen- 
ship." "This  element  was  inconsequential, 
except  in  politics,  where  its  influence  was 
baleful  beyond  description  in  setting  up  the 
'carpet-bag '-negro  State  Governments  in  the 
South  under  the  Reconstruction  Acts  of 
Congress,  which  were  bolstered  up  by  federal 
troops." 

21.  "Whiskey  was  the  curse  of  the  Southern 
aristocrats" — "The  aristocratic  failures 
were  mostly  hard  drinkers" 

This  is  practically  unanimously  denied. 
The  frequent  comment  appears  that  whiskey 
is  a  "general  curse,"  not  typical  of  section  or 
class.  "  Heredity  kills  an  aristocracy  as  surely 
as  whiskey.  There  is  no  evidence  that  whis- 
key was  worse  for  the  Southern  aristocracy 
than  heredity  has  been  for  that  of  the 
North,"  is  the  comment  of  one  contributor. 

58 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

22.  "Cousin  marriage  (common  in  the  higher 
social  circles  in  parts  of  the  South)  may 
have  been  in  some  degree  a  harmful  ele- 
ment" 

One  correspondent  affirms  this  most  em- 
phatically. However,  it  is  almost  unani- 
mously denied  or  questioned.  The  general 
opinion  seems  to  be  that  it  has  been  a  negligi- 
ble factor  in  determining  racial  conditions, 
more  prevalent  in  aristocratic  communities, 
but  not  confined  to  any  particular  section  of 
the  country.  But  one  says,  "Yes,  and  their 
offspring  from  my  observation  were  physi- 
cally and  mentally  very  weak,  they  died 
young,  and  many  were  consumptives." 

23.  Emigration  has  weakened  the  South   as 
much  as  war 

This  thesis  also  is  generally  questioned. 
One  sees  an  advantage  in  the  Southern  emi- 
gration common  immediately  after  the  war, 
in  that  it  served  to  bring  the  Western  and 
59 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

Northern  sections  of  the  country  into  "closer 
sympathy"  with  the  South.  The  most  that 
can  be  admitted  is  that  emigration  was  a 
small  contributory  factor  in  the  racial  im- 
poverishment of  certain  portions  of  the 
South.  Also,  "the  influence  of  foreigners 
must  have  been  equally  important  in  reduc- 
ing our  standards  with  losses  in  the  Civil 
War/'  "I  think,  judging  from  conditions  in 
the  North,  a  vast  deal  more/'  remarks  one. 
"  For  what  emigration  can  do  to  a  country, 
look  at  Spain,  which  at  the  time  of  the  dis- 
covery of  the  American  continent  possessed 
the  finest  people  in  the  world.  The  Spanish 
people  are  now  getting  upon  their  feet  again, 
but  it  has  been  a  terrible  struggle.  I  may  add 
that  the  reason  that  the  Spanish  race  has  not 
done  better  in  America  is  that  they  promptly 
interbred  with  the  far  inferior  native  races, 
and  with  the  imported  Africans;  in  other 
words,  they  lost  all  of  their  really  best  blood 
to  America,  where  it  became  hopelessly  di- 
60 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

luted  with  blood  of  a  very  inferior  quality." 
"These  young  men  of  the  South  after  the  war 
came  West  to  enrich  a  vast  area  of  country," 
explains  one.  "Some  regions,  like  Missouri, 
Minnesota,  California,  Oregon,  and  so  on, 
appealed  to  these  young  men  more  than  the 
regions  that,  like  Kansas  and  Iowa,  had 
fought  in  the  Civil  War.  They  went  to 
regions  of  the  West  that  welcomed  Southern 
people,  and  gave  a  chance  for  success.  Al- 
though they  broke  with  all  Southern  tradi- 
tion as  to  business,  these  people  were,  so  far 
as  my  personal  knowledge  goes,  gentlemen 
always,  born  slaveholders,  impoverished  by 
war,  with  education  varying  according  to  the 
measure  of  mishaps."  "  Emigration  has  taken 
from  the  South  a  large  number  of  its  best 
men  and  women:  those  most  positive  and 
aggressive  in  character,  most  energetic  and 
having  most  faith  in  their  own  ability."  "It 
is  estimated  that  235,000  natives  of  North 
Carolina  now  live  in  other  States."  This 
61 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

emigration  began  in  1850,  and  was  greatest 
from  1866  to  1870. 

24.  "  The  strong  fell  first  in  battle,  but  the  weak 
fell  in  camp;  so  that  the  balance  remained 
about  the  same99 

This  is  generally  approved.  It  is  denied  by 
seven,  and  questioned  by  six.  One  dismissed 
the  proposition  with  the  word  "Sophistry." 
"The  term  'strong'  needs  defining.  It  would 
be  better  to  say  '  energetic/  though  this  does 
not  quite  convey  a  truthful  meaning.  The 
man  who  falls  first  in  battle  is  the  man  of 
restless  disposition  and  often  misdirected 
energy;  he,  in  a  typical  manifestation,  is  re- 
presented by  the  so-called  soldier  of  fortune. 
If  he  stays  at  home  he  is  likely  to  become  a 
destructive  social  element,  a  demagogue  or 
similar  type.  This  kind  of  man,  in  times  of 
peace,  is  better  as  a  dead  hero  than  as  a  living 
member  of  society.  The  better-balanced  men 
62 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

in  the  regiments,  mentally  and  physically, 
were  those  that  survived,  so  that  the  last  part 
of  the  statement  is  correct.  War  is  always 
useful  in,  to  a  large  degree,  eliminating  the 
aggressive  and  destructive  element  in  any 
community.  I  believe  that  without  an  occa- 
sional war  the  increase  of  this  element  (pro- 
vided, of  course,  that  they  did  not  emigrate) 
would  quickly  result  in  national  decay,  pre- 
ceded by  violent  local  outbreaks.  War  has 
the  great  advantage  of  holding  up  before  the 
people  and  glorifying  a  well-balanced  human 
type,  the  soldier,  to  serve  as  a  breeding 
model  for  the  women,  like  china  eggs  in  a 
henhouse.  In  times  of  peace  the  breeding 
model  is  the  man  attached  to  the  largest  bank 
account  regardless  of  anything  else,  at  least 
in  the  older  communities."  "No,"  says  an- 
other, "one  strong  man  was  worth  as  a  citi- 
zen a  dozen  weak  ones." 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

25.  "Inestimable  damage  was  done  by  the  war 
in  the  South  by  preventing  men  from  secur- 
ing a  proper  education" 

This  is  denied  by  only  four,  and  ques- 
tioned by  four.  The  idea  is  advanced  by  sev- 
eral that  the  war  "educated  men,"  and  that 
"the  necessity  for  working  out  their  own 
salvation  was  of  more  value  than  book- 
learning,  and  made  them  men."  "Unques- 
tionably this  is  true  of  the  upper  classes. 
Many  boys  and  young  men  designed  for 
college  courses  were  never  able  to  take 
them,  being  cut  off  by  four  years  of  war  and 
poverty  afterward." 

26.  "  The  war  could  have  been  avoided  if  pa- 
tience  and  good  sense  had  been  shown" 

The  comments  on  this  thesis  are  most  in- 
teresting and  varied.  Those  that  agree  are  in 
the  small  majority.  The  correspondent  that 
says,  "No  one  can  answer  this  intelligently" 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

is  perhaps  nearest  the  truth;  or  the  one  who 
says  this  is  "A  proposition  of  too  many  sides 
to  be  discussed  here."  We  are  reminded  that 
"Lincoln  and  Lee  held  practically  the  same 
view;  they  were  representative  of  a  large  and 
influential  element  in  the  United  States/' 
The  suggestion  is  made  that  there  was  needed 
in  addition  a  "  reasonable  respect  for  consti- 
tutional rights."  Disregard  of  constitutional 
rights  is  a  frequently  recurring  criticism  in 
this  group  of  comments.  The  idea  is  ex- 
pressed that  "the  seed  was  sown  when  the 
Federal  Constitution  was  adopted.  It  had  to 
come."  One  believes  that  "two  Confederacies 
would  have  been  better  than  war  and  subju- 
gation." The  latter  opinion  is  given  weight 
by  inclusion  of  the  fact  of  the  enormous  waste 
of  Southern  manhood.  "I  do  not  agree  with 
what  is  written  under  this  number.  The 
seeds  of  the  Civil  War  were  planted  in  the 
Constitution  of  our  Government.  If  slavery 
had  to  be  abolished,  war  was  inevitable.  This 

65 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

institution  was  recognized  and  protected  in 
the  organic  law.  The  owners  could  not  with 
patience  submit  to  its  abolition  or  destruc- 
tion, without  remuneration,  and  remunera- 
tion would  —  could  never  have  been  made. 
It  was  not  a  question  of  patience,  but  of 
degradation  and  dishonor  —  to  submit  to 
taking  this  property  without  voluntary  con- 
sent of  the  owner,  and  for  a  just  pecuniary 
equivalent,  was  to  become  a  nation  of  pol- 
troons. Even  if  the  loss  to  the  South  in  hu- 
man life,  and  in  property,  and  the  whole 
train  of  evil  results  of  this  unhappy  conflict, 
could  have  been  seen  from  the  beginning,  I 
do  not  think  "good  sense5  required  or  could 
justify  tame  submission  to  the  unthinkable 
disgrace  which  was  required.  From  the  utili- 
tarian standpoint  I  understand  it  can  be 
said  it  is  no  worse  to  submit  to  the  inevitable 
before  the  catastrophe  than  after  all  this 
carnage  and  loss,  and  good  sense  would  de- 
mand the  former.  Not  so!  A  man,  or  state, 
66 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

or  section,  or  nation  without  the  spirit  and 
determination  not  to  submit  to  injustice  and 
spoliation  tamely,  is  worth  preserving.  No 
single  man  or  people  is  lowered  in  the  estima- 
tion of  himself,  or  the  balance  of  mankind, 
for  submission,  no  matter  how  hard  the 
terms,  to  that  which  by  imperiling  his  life 
and  all  that  is  near  and  dear  to  him,  he  could 
not  avert.  With  this  sort  of  sentiment,  our 
exhausted  —  well-nigh  ruined  —  condition, 
can  in  a  sense  be  retrieved ;  but  with  no  such 
spirit,  for  that  people  there  is  no  future 
but  degradation  and  pusillanimity/'  "To 
this  my  answer  would  be  'yes.'  But  it 
seemed  to  be  in  the  Eternal  Counsels  that 
nothing  but  war  would  satisfy  the  nation, 
North  and  South.  Henry  Clay's  proposed 
solution  of  the  slavery  question,  about  1840, 
involved  an  expenditure  of  twenty-five  mil- 
lions of  dollars,  spread  over  several  decades 
of  years;  and  would  have  involved  no  breach 
of  peace ;  would  have  caused  no  ill-will  be- 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

tween  North  and  South;  and  would  have 
left  the  whole  situation  better  than  it  was  at 
the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  or,  indeed,  than  it 
is  now.  But  North  and  South  rejected  the 
Clay  proposal  or  suggestion,  and  slavery  was 
abolished  at  the  cost  of  at  least  five  hundred 
thousand  of  the  best  lives  the  nation  had  to 
give,  and  the  blotting-out  of  values  North 
and  South  to  the  amount  of  over  ten  thou- 
sand millions  of  dollars/'  "No  power  on 
earth  could  have  stopped  it.  The  conflict 
was  inevitable."  In  her  novel  "Cease  Firing," 
Miss  Mary  Johnston,  through  her  character 
of  Allan  Gold,  thus  sums  up  this  matter. 
"What  do  I  think?  I  think  that  we  were 
both  right  and  both  wrong,  and  that  in  the 
beginning  each  side  might  have  been  more 
patient  and  much  wiser.  Life  and  history, 
right  and  wrong,  and  the  minds  of  men  look 
out  of  more  windows  than  we  used  to 
think." 


68 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

27.  "  The  democratic  equality  of  the  high-born 
and  low-born  in  the  camp  was  good  for 
both;  the  pampered  sons  were  helped  by  the 
democratic  severity  of  their  work,  the  ignor- 
ant by  contact  with  good  manners  and  cul- 
ture'9 

This  is  very  intelligently  and  warmly  dis- 
puted by  a  number.  The  majority  are  in- 
clined to  qualify.  Such  effect  was  probably 
very  transitory.  "No  —  there  was  no  asso- 
ciation to  bring  about  such  a  condition. 
Education  and  refinement  will  always  hold 
high  above  ignorance  and  vulgarity.  Mili- 
tary training  and  service  bring  out  the  best 
qualities  and  also  develop  the  mean  qualities 
of  a  man."  "Undoubtedly  the  war  was  a 
strong  educational  force  for  the  non-slave- 
owning  Southern  soldier  whose  mental  hori- 
zon had  been  bounded  by  his  neighborhood 
of  a  radius  not  exceeding  fifteen  or  twenty 
miles :  he  saw  things  that  he  had  never  read 
or  dreamed  of  before.  But  it  is  doubtful  if  it 

69 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

had  any  corresponding  educational  value  to 
the  ruling  class." 

28.  "  Social  lines  vanished  during  the  war,  and 
have  not  reappeared" 

Only  eight  assent  to  this  unreservedly. 
What  "social  lines"  existed,  perhaps  "never 
deeply  marked  at  any  time  in  Virginia," 
were  natural  and  could  not  so  easily  be 
obliterated.  They  appeared  less  sharp  in 
camp,  but  their  apparent  disappearance  was 
only  very  transient. 

29.  "  The  war  made  men  work,  and  this  alone 
has  been  a  great  blessing  to  the  South" 

Here  the  intimation  that  Southern  men 
did  not  work  before  the  war  is  emphatically 
denied.  Likewise  the  further  deduction  that 
the  "end  of  life  is  work."  Still,  a  bare  ma- 
jority approve  the  statement,  and  the  re- 
marks that  "not  only  in  the  South  have  men 
70 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

needed  incentives  to  work"  may  be  said  to 
approximate  the  consensus  of  opinion. 

50.  "  The  South  is  the  better  by  far  for  the 
spread  of  education,  for  the  willingness  to 
work,  for  the  loss  of  slavery,  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  Union,  and  for  the  develop- 
ment of  business.  But  for  the  war,  as 
war,  there  was  no  redeeming  feature,  no 
benefit  to  any  one,  not  one  word  to  be 
said" 

Only  one  seriously  dissents  from  the  con- 
cluding sentence ;  and  four  deny  parts  of  the 
first  sentence.  The  following  comments  may 
be  noted:  (i)  "The  loss  in  blood  and  energy, 
and  the  demoralization  cannot  be  calculated. 
It  emasculated  manhood  North  and  South 
and  built  up  graft.  Pensions  only  weaken 
men";  (2)  "Reconstruction  was  worse  than 
war";  (3)  "Too  strong,  but  the  curse  of  the 
war  was  heavier  than  the  blessing";  (4) 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

"The  South  is  poorer  for  her  loss  of  hold 
on  the  ideals  which  actuated  her  struggle"; 
(5)  "The  war  was  worth  all  it  cost  to  the 
South";  (6)  "The  war  was  a  blessing  in 
many  ways  to  the  South.  The  South  is  one 
hundred  years  ahead  of  what  it  would  have 
been  without  the  war";  (7)  "The  disturbance 
of  the  social  arrangements  of  the  ante- 
bellum days  among  the  aristocracy,  'poor 
whites/  etc.,  etc.,  was  biologically  a  good 
thing,  since  these  class  distinctions  had 
ceased  to  be  based  largely  on  excellence  of 
strain";  (8)  "It  is  not  unimportant  to  feel 
that  there  is  something  worth  fighting  for, 
worth  dying  for.  It  would  be  hard  to  say 
what  there  is  of  such  worth  in  our  present 
commercial-industrial  life";  (9)  "More  me- 
nacing than  war  is  the  infertility  of  the 
'best'  of  men,  but  more  especially  of 
women";  (10)  "The  world  has  become  com- 
mercialized because  the  idealists  have  been 
killed  off." 

72 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

The  opinion  of  an  eminent  judge  seems 
worth  quoting:  "There  is  a  degeneration  of 
stock  all  over  the  country,  but  this  is  due  to 
our  social  environment.  We  accept  the  prin- 
ciple of  contra-selection  but  I  think  it  diffi- 
cult to  prove.  There  are  just  as  good  men 
to-day  as  there  were  at  the  time  of  the  Civil 
War,  only  the  time  does  not  give  them  the 
opportunity  to  show  their  ability.  The  de- 
serters and  the  conscripts  were  often  men 
who  had  to  look  after  large  families.  The 
average  of  Rockbridge  County  is  up  to  its 
usual  standard.  Families  which  were  en- 
tirely wiped  out  by  the  war  are  the  exception. 
There  was  usually  enough  left  to  keep  the 
stock  up/' 

A  Confederate  general  expresses  the  opin- 
ion that  "the  thing  which  will  finally  stop 
war  is  a  conviction  of  its  uselessness  rather 
than  any  of  its  biological  consequences/'  and 
"that  pensions  have  done  more  harm  than 
good,  especially  in  the  North.  One  great 
73 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

cause  of  the  depression  in  the  South  is  the 
drain  of  pensions.  The  South  pays  $60,000,- 
ooo  in  pensions  per  year.  Of  the  pension 
budget  total  of  $4,500,000,000,  $1,000,000,- 
ooo  has  been  paid  by  the  South.  North 
Carolina  pays  $4,000,000  per  year,  receiving 
$770,000  in  return  (this,  besides  paying 
$400,000  in  Southern  pensions  to  Southern 
soldiers).  Indiana  pays  a  little  more  and  re- 
ceives back  $10,000,000  per  year.  The  pen- 
sion list  is  full  of  fraud.  One  $6000  judge 

in  M draws  $72  per  month  for  total 

disability.  A  late  Commissioner  of  Pensions 
at  $7200  draws  a  pension  for  total  disability. 
The  pension  list  is  kept  up  and  increased  to 
make  a  high  tariff  seem  necessary.  To  keep 
up  the  tariff,  the  gaps  in  the  pension  roll 
must  be  kept  up.  So  with  warship  expenses. 
They  raise  the  rate  of  pensions  because  they 
cannot  extend  their  area/' 

In  a  certain  Southern  State  the  reversed 
selection  of  the  war  is  held  responsible  for  the 
74 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

type  of  governor.  "The  aristocratic  counties 
of  my  State  are  completely  faded  out  by  loss 
of  their  leaders  in  the  war.  The  same  is  true 

of  the  principal  city .  The  men  left  are 

weak,  undersized,  and  the  State  has  few  men 
fit  for  leadership." 

In  a  more  Western  State  the  punishment 
of  the  war  is  said  to  have  fallen  on  "the  old, 
fine,  proud,  pompous,  hospitable  aristocracy. 
It  wiped  out  a  third  of  it  and  impoverished 
half  the  rest/' 

"The  spread  of  education  among  the 
masses  I  consider  has  been  the  greatest  curse 
which  has  ever  come  upon  the  country, 
North  or  South,  just  as  it  has  been  the 
greatest  evil  the  West  Indies  have  ever  had  to 
contend  with,"  says  our  radical  eudemist. 
"Work  here,  of  course,  means  manual  labor; 
willingness  to  perform  this  kind  of  work 
means  inability  to  perform  any  other  kind, 
either  from  lack  of  opportunity  or  from  lack 
of  personal  incentive."  On  the  contrary,  it 
75 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

is  urged  that  "education  has  been  of  great 
benefit.  Employment  for  all  an  advantage. 
Loss  of  slavery  makes  life  better  for  future 
generations.  Business  is  more  diversified  and 
progress  greater.  The  number  of  mulattoes 
has  decreased  since  the  war.  Union  with 
equal  rights  and  consideration  for  all  sections 
is  far  better  with  sectionalism  obliterated. 
War  is  a  curse  to  any  nation  or  people/' 

"The  evil  effect  of  prolonged  war  in  de- 
stroying the  most  virile  males  is  manifest  not 
only  in  the  Southern  States  of  America  after 
the  Civil  War,  but  also  in  the  Northern 
States,  especially  the  New  England  and 
Middle  States.  Ben  Butler  as  Governor 
of  Massachusetts,  Tammany  rule  in  New 
York  City  and  State,  Quay  rule  in  Pennsyl- 
vania, etc.,  were  made  possible  by  the 
inferior  citizenship  that  they  represented. 
The  Southern-Civil-War  soldiers  were  so  far 
superior  to  the  post-bellum  generation  that 
they  controlled  and  directed  public  affairs  in 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

the  South  (generally  speaking)  until  about 
1900,  when  practically  all  of  them  were  dead ; 
the  same  is  true  to  a  great  extent  of  many 
Northern  States;  it  is  difficult  to  find  for 
thirty  years  after  the  war  a  conspicuous 
Southern  leader  who  has  not  been  a  soldier/' 


CONCLUSION 

In  conclusion,  we  are  impressed  that  with 
respect  to  the  eugenic  aspect  of  the  Civil  War 
we  are  dealing  with  matters  insusceptible  of 
precise  determination.  Many  factors  united 
to  work  an  apparently  racial  effect;  these 
factors  are  so  intricately  and  reciprocally 
interrelated  as  to  preclude  definite  isolation 
and  tracing  of  the  complete  effects  of  any  one. 
The  patent  results  are  thus  more  or  less 
matters  of  environment  as  well  as  of  differ- 
ences in  germ-plasm,  of  euthenics  as  well  as 
of  eugenics.  We  hesitate  to  attempt  even  a 
guarded  definite  conclusion.  Perhaps  it  were 
77 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

better  to  leave  it  to  interested  readers  to 
draw  conclusions  each  one  for  himself.  We 
have  presented  the  matter  largely  in  the 
words  of  those  who  have  given  us  the  best  of 
their  life  experience.  A  just  weighing  of  all 
this  evidence,  however,  leaves  a  decided 
balance  in  favor  of  grave  racial  hurt  in  con- 
sequence of  war,  and  this  certainty  is  cumu- 
lative, becoming  more  definite  with  the  con- 
sideration of  each  new  area.  Each  of  the 
other  baneful  racial  influences  associated 
with  the  problem,  social,  cultural,  and  eco- 
nomic devastation,  emigration,  pensions, 
etc.,  is  nevertheless  the  direct  consequence  of 
war  and  should  be  debited  to  it.  Moreover, 
even  granting  that  the  South  and  the  coun- 
try as  a  whole  are,  relative  to  ante-bellum 
days,  no  poorer  racially  in  consequence  of 
the  war,  —  an  assumption  no  one  can  main- 
tain in  the  face  of  the  enormous  waste  of  one 
million  splendid  souls,  — it  is  further  certain 
that,  could  we  have  had  the  inspiring  pre- 

78 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

sence  and  wise  counsel  of  these  martyrs  and 
their  potential  offspring,  the  country  would 
now  be  immeasurably  better  off  in  a  yet 
higher  average  of  physical,  mental,  and 
moral  stamina.  In  brief,  the  theoretical  argu- 
ment for  reversed  selection  seems  beyond 
question.  The  actual  facts  concerning  our 
Civil  War  and  the  events  which  followed 
yield  no  direct  countervailing  evidence.  We 
must,  therefore,  decide  that  the  war  has  seri- 
ously impoverished  this  country  of  its  best 
human  values.  No  one  who  has  the  right  to 
speak,  North  or  South,  ventures  to  regard 
this  war  as  a  source  of  vigor  or  virility  to  the 
nation.  In  spite  of  its  thousands  of  examples 
of  heroism  and  self-sacrifice,  it  was  plainly 
a  strife  between  brothers,  and  a  strife  in 
which  no  one  gained  through  his  brother's 
loss. 

Nor  does   any   competent   authority   in 
America  maintain  the  singular  heresy  of  cer- 
tain public  men  in  England,  that  the  waste 
79 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

of  virility  due  to  war  can  be  repaired  by 
compulsory  or  voluntary  military  drill.  If 
we  assume  that  such  drill  gives  increased 
physical  and  mental  vigor,  an  assertion  true 
only  in  a  slight  degree,  the  fact  remains  that 
such  results  would  not  be  perpetuated  in 
heredity.  (No  training,  mental  or  physical, 
can  raise  a  man  above  his  possibilities  and  it 
is  the  possibilities  only  that  his  children  in- 
herity  The  events  in  a  man's  life  leave  no 
trace  in  actual  heredity  and  none  in  trans- 
mission, unless  the  events  have  consequences 
which  impair  the  vigor  of  the  germ  cells. 
Those  of  us  who  believe  in  the  value  of 
sound  physical  training  to  the  growing  youth 
cannot  admit  that  barrack  life  is  in  any 
worthy  degree  a  substitute  for  it. 
^  Edward  H.  Clement,  of  Boston,  referring 
to  these  investigations,  has  used  these  strik- 
ing words : "  Ever  since  the  last  quarter  of  the 
last  century  the  lamentation  has  been  heard : 
Where  are  the  poets  of  yesterday  ?  Where  are 
80 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

the  historians,  the  philosophers,  the  political 
leaders,  the  moral  reformers  [of  Boston], 
whom  the  whole  country  and  the  world 
gladly  followed  in  the  liberalizing  of  thought 
and  of  religion.  In  the  light  of  the  emphasis 
on  the  degeneration  of  nations  through  their 
glorious  wars,  answer  might  well  be  sought 
in  the  Roll  of  Honor  l  of  Harvard  Memorial 
Hall.  The  price  was  worth  paying,  no  doubt. 
The  ones  who  gave  their  lives  in  the  Civil 
War  most  certainly  thought  so.  But  the 
price  was  exacted  all  the  same.  There  stand 
the  names  of  those  who,  but  for  this  sacrifice, 
might  have  continued  the  glory  of  Boston  in 
all  the  higher  reaches  of  intellectual  life,  in 
national  politics,  and  in  social  advance." 

The  Civil  War  was  followed  by  the  extinc- 
tion of  slavery,  by  the  maintenance  of  the 
democracy,  and  by  the  spread  of  the  free- 
school  system  of  the  Union  throughout  the 

1  On  this  roll  are  the  names  of  ninety-six  men 
from  Harvard  University  who  fell  in  the  Civil  War. 

8l 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

rural  districts  of  the  South.  That  all  these 
results  were  most  desirable,  even  vital  to  the 
extension  of  civilization  in  the  New  World, 
no  one  may  now  deny.  But  we  may  hesitate 
to  ascribe  any  of  these  results  directly  to  the 
Civil  War.  Sooner  or  later  they  were  inevit- 
able in  the  life  of  the  people  concerned.  The 
exhaustion  of  the  South  opened  the  way,  but 
their  final  establishment  on  a  basis  as  per- 
manent as  any  human  institution  can  be  is 
due  to  their  innate  relation  to  wisdom  and 
righteousness,  and  not  to  the  results  of  any 
campaign.  If  these  were  wrong,  they  would 
not  have  endured.  If  the  struggles  of  blood 
and  starvation  had  left  at  the  end  a  wrong 
decision,  it  must  sooner  or  later  have  come 
up  again  for  judgment. 

A  splendid  summary  are  the  words  of  the 
Confederate  officer  who  gave  us  our  proposi- 
tion 30:  "The  South  is  the  better  by  far  for 
the  spread  of  education,  for  its  willingness  to 
work,  for  the  loss  of  slavery,  for  the  mainte- 
82 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

nance  of  the  Union,  and  for  the  development 
of  business.  But  for  the  war,  as  war,  there 
was  no  redeeming  feature,  no  benefit  to  any 
one,  not  one  word  to  be  said." 

We  may  finally  close  this  discussion  with 
the  words  of  one  of  the  most  successful  sol- 
diers of  the  nineteenth  century,  William  T. 
Sherman.  On  May  21,  1865,  he  wrote  to  a 
friend,  James  L.  Yeatman,'"!  confess  with- 
out shame  that  I  am  tired  and  sick  of  war. 
Its  glory  is  all  moonshine.  Even  success,  the 
most  brilliant  is  over  dead  and  mangled 
bodies,  the  anguish  and  lamentations  of  dis- 
tant families,  appealing  to  me  for  missing 
sons,  husbands,  and  fathers.  It  is  only  those 
who  have  not  heard  a  shot,  nor  the  shrieks 
and  groans  of  the  wounded,  friend  or  foe, 
who  cry  aloud  for  more  blood,  more  ven- 
geance, more  desolation." 


II 

WAR'S   AFTERMATH    IN   MACEDONIA 

BY  DAVID   STARR  JORDAN 

SOME  two  years  ago  the  Balkan  States 
formed  an  alliance  for  the  purpose  of  freeing 
their  kindred  peoplg  in  Macgdonia  from  the 
rule  of  the  Turk.  They  chose  for  this  pur- 
pose the  most  costly,  wasteful,  futile,  and 
uncertain  method  possible:  the  method  of 
war.  It  is  clear  that  war  was  not  the  original 
purpose  of  the  allies  —  at  least  not  that  of 
Bulgaria.  Some  sort  of  moral  or  political 
suasion  was  expected  to  follow  from  mobili- 
zation. But  such  possibility  was  dissipated 
when  the  King  of  Montenegro  advanced  on 
Scutari. 

The  conditions  in  Macedonia  seemed  to 
justify  any  sort  of  interference.  The  rule  of 
the  Turk  is  always  inefficient.  The  race,  being 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

primarily  military,  has  always  failed  in  civil 
administration.  Long  periods  of  careless 
tolerance  have  alternated  with  savage  mas- 
sacre, the  attempt  to  eradicate  all  those  with 
a  different  religion  or  a  different  language. 
Moreover,  Macedonia  was  beset  by  bands 
of  outlaw  patriots,  "comitajis,"  working  in 
rough  fashion  for  the  freedom  of  Macedonia, 
the  one  band  for  its  independent  autonomy, 
the  other  for  its  union  with  Bulgaria,  the 
majority  of  the  people  of  Macedonia  being 
of  Bulgarian  origin.  The  changes  in  politics 
in  Constantinople  brought  to  the  front  the 
"Committee  of  Union  and  Progress/'  and 
to  this  committee  "union"  means  the  con- 
version, banishment,  or  massacre  of  all  ele- 
ments alien  in  religion  or  in  speech.  The 
same  spirit  of  politico-linguistic  intolerance 
pervades  all  the  rest  of  Europe,  extending  in 
its  degree  to  Schleswig,  Trieste,  and  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  as  well  as  to  Finland,  Poland,  and 
Macedonia.  And  in  Macedonia  it  gave  rise 
85 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

to  the  proverb,  "  Better  an  end  with  horror, 
than  horror  without  end/' 

The  Balkan  War  began  in  an  honest  spirit 
of  altruism.  (  But  as  war  is  hell,  its  atmos- 
phere is  hate.  Victory  breeds  ambition,  and 
ambition  in  the  use  of  force  means  moral 
perversion.]  The  meddling  of  the  Great 
Powers  led  to  the  dismemberment  of  Mace- 
donia, and  that,  under  the  inflamed  condi- 
tions then  existing,  made  the  second  war 
inevitable.  Now  Macedonia  is  a  desert  waste 
and  the  conditions  in  the  Balkans  are  worse 
than  ever  before.  But  of  this  Europe  ceased 
to  take  notice.  It  had  deeds  still  more  hid- 
eous in  contemplation.  It  is  a  common  ex- 
pression in  Sofia,  "Europe  n'existe  plus," 
("Europe  no  longer  exists.")  And  that  is 
true  so  far  as  concerned  any  help  or  guidance 
Europe  might  exert  over  these  sorely  tried 
young  nations  of  wrangling  shepherds,  mad- 
dened by  victory,  defeat,  injustice,  and  mur- 
der. 

86 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

A  friend  in  Bulgaria  writes  (April,  1914) : 
"There  could  be  no  better  illustration  in  the 
world  of  your  often  repeated  belief  that  "war 
does  not  settle  anything/  The  Balkan  pen- 
insula has  always  been  a  problem.  To-day 
the  problem  is  keener  and  more  acute  than 
ever  before.  It  has  come  to  be  a  terrible 
plague,  an  awful  curse.  Life  here  is  wretched. 
Man  is  doomed.  The  fruits  of  these  superb 
valleys  are  misery  and  agony.  The  only 
deeds  upon  which  our  magnificent  moun- 
tains look  down  are  murder,  rapine,  streams 
of  blood,  and  fields  of  bones.  And  there  is 
no  way  out.  The  very  breezes  breed  hatred 
and  our  wild  tempests  shriek  revenge.  The 
birds  sing  to  us  of  past  injustice.  The  streams 
soothe  our  spirits  with  the  intoxicating  whis- 
per of  future  revenge.  Our  fathers  taught  us 
to  remember  the  Bloody  Turk.  We  teach 
our  children  to  remember  the  treacherous 
Greek." 

The  basis  of  these  hatreds  is  not  primarily 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

war.  Nor  is  it  to  any  great  extent  the  differ- 
ence in  race.  At  the  bottom  it  is  religious 
intolerance.  Difference  in  language  is  the 
most  obvious  sign  of  heresy  in  religion/ 
Through  this  intolerance  nearly  a  million\ 
people,  almost  half  the  people  of  Macedonia 
and  Thrace,  have  lost  their  homes  and  sav- 
ings since  the  war,  and  are  wandering  as 
refugees  among  people  of  their  race  who  give 
them  scanty  welcome. 

In  October,  1913,  my  Bulgarian  corre- 
spondent wrote:  "The  lot  of  the  refugees 
is  wretched  beyond  description.  [Those  in 
Samokov  are  dying  daily  from  cold  and 
privation.  They  are  without  homes,  prop- 
erty, schools,  and  everything  else,  including 
hope.  Then  added  to  this  hopelessness  is 
the  fact  that  the  Bulgarians  do  not  like  these 
refugees.  They  tell  them:  "My  brother  is 
lying  dead  in  Macedonia  because  of  you,  and 
now  you  come  up  here  to  live  in  my  house, 
eat  my  bread,  and  take  my  job.  Get  out/ 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

"And  the  refugee  answers:  'Who  told  you  to 
come  down  to  Macedonia  and  trample  down 
our  vineyards,  eat  our  flocks,  and  then  run 
off  and  leave  our  village  to  be  burned  ?  I 
don't  care  if  your  brother  is  dead  in  Mace- 
donia. My  brother  is  dead,  too/  The  Bul- 
garian will  survive  all  this  because  he  is  of 
such  a  nature  that  he  cannot  be  entirely 
conquered,  but  the  process  of  recovery  will 
be  terribly,  terribly  painful/' 

In  May,  1914,  the  writer,  accompanied 
by  his  friends,  Dr.  John  Mez,  of  Munich; 
R.  H.  Markham,  principal  of  the  American 
School  at  Samokov;  and  Emil  F.  Hollmann, 
of  Oxford,  crossed  Bulgaria  and  Macedonia 
from  the  Danube  to  the  ^Egean  Sea.  Among 
other  things  we  saw  the  burned  towns  and 
the  refugees.  In  western  Bulgaria  a  single 
good  highway  leads  from  Sofia  to  Salonica. 
Down  this  highway  the  Turks  fled  in  the 
first  Balkan  War,  the  Turkish  population 
following  them.  Up  this  road  the  Bulgarian 
89 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

troops  fled  in  the  second  Balkan  War,  fol- 
lowed by  the  Greeks.  While  the  Rouman- 
ians were  burning  their  homes,  the  Bulgarian 
farmers  had  no  stomach  for  fighting  Greeks. 
After  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest  had  divided 
Macedonia  from  east  to  west  by  an  artificial 
line  the  Greek  army  retreated  from  Bulgarian 
territory,  followed  by  most  of  the  Greek 
population,  burning  towns  and  bridges  as 
they  went,  as  the  Turks  before  them  had 
done. 

All  the  way  from  Sofia  to  Petritsch,  the 
border  town,  we  saw  the  groups  of  refugees. 
From  Simlivit,  the  northernmost  town  of 
Bulgarian  Macedonia,  to  Petritsch,  every 
town  —  Dzumaia,  Livonovo,  Kula,  and  the 
rest  —  has  been  burned,  wholly  or  in  part, 
scarcely  a  house  within  reach  of  the  moving 
armies  being  left  with  a  roof  over  it. 

In  Petritsch,  hundreds  of  refugees  from 
the  Salonica  district  sit  about  on  the  rough 
stone  sidewalks  waiting  —  waiting  for  the 
90 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

revision  of  the  Treaty  of  Bucharest.  Some 
newspaper  had  said  that  the  Powers  would 
revise  this  shameful  treaty  so  that  these 
people  could  go  back  to  their  homes.  But 
that  revision1  will  never  come.  "Europe 
no  longer  exists." 

One  man  in  Petritsch,  a  citizen  of  West 
Virginia,  had  come  to  Macedonia  to  settle 
his  father's  estate,  a  good  farm  near  Salonica. 
This  he  had  lost;  and  as  a  refugee  he  was 
keeping  a  little  food  shop  competing  with 
many  others  for  the  trifling  purchases  of 

1  Again  my  friend  writes:  "It  is  impossible  for  us 
to  stay  in  the  frying-pan,  but  we  don't  know  just 
what  fire  to  jump  into.  A  belief  is  inculcated  and 
widely  accepted  that  Roumania  and  Turkey  are 
both  going  to  return  to  Bulgaria  the  land  they  took 
from  her.  Our  northeast  boundary  will  be  as  of 
yore,  our  southeast  boundary  will  be  Enos  Midia. 
England,  I  believe,  is  the  godmother  who  will  bring 
this  about.  When  we  are  'licking,'  let  the  big  bullies 
keep  their  hands  off.  When  we  are  being  whipped, 
we  implore  their  help,  curse  them  for  their  delay, 
and  build  spacious  air-castles  out  of  their  unsub- 
stantial promises." 

91 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

half-starved  people.  "The  cost  of  living  has 
doubled ;  the  means  of  living  are  gone." 

In  Sinjelovo,  a  little  Bulgarian  town  on  the 
Greek  side  of  the  made-up  boundary,  the 
men  had  all  been  driven  across  the  river  into 
the  Bulgarian  holdings.  The  women  re- 
mained and  gathered  the  crops.  In  general, 
the  women  harvested  all  the  Balkan  crops 
in  1913.  Thanks  to  the  help  of  rain  and  sun- 
shine, the  harvests  were  most  bountiful. 

The  great  highway  crosses  the  border  on  a 
bridge  over  the  little  river  Bistritza  ("clear 
water").  Here  we  found  encamped  the 
growers  of  tobacco,  "Turkish  tobacco,"  from 
"a  little  Dead  Sea  of  Commerce,"  the  rich 
valley  of  Strumitza.  The  Bulgarian  growers 
were  not  allowed  to  pass  the  border.  The 
buyers  came  up  from  Salonica  and  the  crop 
was  transferred  from  the  hundreds  of  bul- 
lock teams  to  a  host  of  buffalo  carts  and  a 
train  of  camels  headed  for  Salonica.  Inci- 
dentally the  owners  paid  a  duty  of  33  J  per 
92 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

cent  for  the  privilege  of  crossing  Greek  terri- 
tory. Incidentally,  too,  we  may  notice  that 
the  Treaty  of  Bucharest  has  cut  off  most  of 
the  hinterland  from  the  seaports  of  Salonica, 
Cavalla,  and  Varna.  The  effect  of  this  on 
Salonica  has  been  most  hurtful.  The  high 
tariffs  and  excessive  taxes  "have  made  this 
the  most  critical  period  in  the  history  of  Sal- 
onica: the  Government  of  Athens  treats  its 
new  provinces  as  the  goose  with  the  golden 
egg." 1  "The  cow  that  gives  the  milk  for  mili- 
tary aggrandizement  at  Athens  is  the  New 
Greece." 

Crossing  over  into  this  new  Greece,  we 

were  for  two  days  in  the  camp  "Christos 

aneste  Hellas,"  the  guests  of  a  division  of 

the  Greek  army,  charming  young  men  on  the 

whole,  many  of  them  citizens  of  the  United 

States.    Some  of  these  were  possessed  with 

the  "On  to  Constantinople"  idea,  but  one 

of  them  confided  his  belief  that  war  brought 

1  Die  Information,  April  22,  1914. 

93 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

no  good  to  Greece,  nor  could  he  see  why 
Christians  should  want  to  kill  each  other. 

At  Demir  Hissar,  where  the  highway 
crosses  the  railway  which  connects  Adrian- 
ople  with  Salonica,  we  met  the  Greek  refu- 
gees from  Thrace.  These  were  living  in  box 
cars  at  the  stations,  a  dozen  or  two  at  this 
and  each  of  the  other  stations  on  the  road. 
At  the  larger  towns,  as  Kilkis  and  Salonica, 
they  were  gathered  in  great  tent  cities,  ten 
thousand  or  more  in  each  place.  All  these 
towns  on  the  road  between  Drama  and 
Salonica,  originally  half  Bulgarian,  the  rest 
Greek  and  Turkish,  had  been  burned  in  whole 
or  in  part  by  one  or  all  of  the  three  armies 
which  passed  through  them.  For  the  history 
of  these  conflagrations  I  refer  the  reader  to 
the  report  of  the  Carnegie  Commission  of 
Investigation.  As  to  this  monumental  piece 
of  work  I  may  say  that  I  believe  it  to  be 
absolutely  trustworthy,  as  just  and  as  accu- 
rate as  such  a  report  could  be  made.  It  is 

94 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

not  pleasant  reading  for  the  most  part.  It 
was  not  easy  writing,  but  the  cure  for  the 
evil  conditions  which  have  prevailed  and 
still  prevail  in  the  Balkans  rests  on  knowing 
the  truth  as  to  the  disease.  Publicity  would 
cure  most  of  the  larger  evils  from  which  all 
Europe  is  suffering.  "There  never  was  a 
good  war  nor  a  bad  peace/'  In  this  Benja- 
min Franklin  was  essentially  right,  but  no 
bad  war  ever  gave  way  to  a  good  peace.  War, 
fills  the  ground  with  the  seeds  of  other  wars, 
and  while  these  spring  up,  peace  exists  only 
in  name. 

The  refugees  at  Demir  Hissar  came  from 
the  region  about  Adrianople.  These  had 
been  driven  out  of  Thrace  to  make  way  for 
Albanian  refugees  from  Servian  rule  in  Novi- 
bazar.  These  Albanians  gave  the  Greeks 
from  two  hours  to  four  days  to  vacate  their 
holdings.  The  Government  refused  pass- 
ports or  protection.  The  farmers  were  not 
allowed  to  go  to  the  towns  to  sell  their  prod- 
95 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

uce  and  they  had  no  alternative  but  to  go. 
With  the  Turk,  as  more  or  less  with  the 
other  Balkan  nations,  "union"  means  one 
flag,  one  religion,  and  one  language,  and 
aliens  are  given  the  choice  of  immediate  con- 
version or  banishment,  or  in  extreme  cases 
massacre.  The  whole  situation  was  summed 
up  by  one  Thracian  farmer  in  the  Italian 
word  "duro"  ("hard"). 

But  these  conditions  were  not  so  hard  as 
those  of  the  Bulgarian  emigrants,  for  these 
fled  in  the  autumn  and  winter.  The  Thra- 
cians  set  forth  in  the  perfect  weather  of  the 
Macedonian  May.  To  the  children  this 
movement  in  crowds  from  place  to  place, 
cooking  rice  on  fires  of  weeds,  had  all  the 
charm  of  a  picnic. 

It  is  estimated  that  there  are  about  three 
hundred  thousand  of  these  Greek  refugees 
in  Macedonia.  Little  by  little  they  are  set- 
tled on  farms  and  in  villages  abandoned  by 
Bulgarians  and  Turks.  It  was  said  that  fifty 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

thousand  of  these  had  come  from  Asia  Minor, 
driven  out  by  boycott  and  ostracism  before 
the  disturbances  in  Smyrna  and  Mytilene. 
It  is  estimated  that  about  forty-five  thou- 
sand Bulgarian  refugees  from  Turkish  Thrace 
are  at  Burgas.  In  a  recent  Turkish  journal 
is  a  plea  for  bringing  these  back  to  Thrace : 
"These  Albanians  are  more  expert  with  the 
mauser  than  with  the  plough.  They  show 
no  skill  in  any  trade  save  that  of  cattle- 
thieves,  while  the  Bulgarians  are  thrifty  and 
industrious,  and  they  are  now  our  friends." 

It  is  said  that  the  towns  about  Varna  are 
crowded  likewise  with  Bulgarians  driven 
by  the  Roumanians  from  the  Dobruja  dis- 
trict filched  by  them  through  the  Treaty  of 
Bucharest. 

Out  of  Greek  Macedonia  before  the  ist 
of  June  212,000  Turks  had  left  the  port  of 
Salonica.  Most  of  these  went  as  steerage 
passengers  on  the  steamers  for  Constanti- 
nople, carrying  with  them  their  scanty  be- 
97 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

longings.  These  have  been  placed  in  part 
in  properties  abandoned  by  Greeks  in  Thrace, 
and  in  part,  it  is  said,  on  the  property  of 
inhabitants  of  Asia  Minor.  Many  of  these 
are  Pomaks,  Bulgarians  converted  to  Is- 
lam. It  is  claimed  by  the  Greeks  that  most 
of  these  have  come  from  Servian  and  Bul- 
garian Macedonia. 

Some  Turks  are  still  left  in  the  towns  of 
Bulgarian  Macedonia,  to  all  appearance 
mostly  idlers.  In  Greek  Macedonia,  there 
are  still  many  Turks.  The  number  is  roughly 
estimated  at  sixty  thousand,  most  of  them 
being  in  the  larger  towns.  Turkish  teamsters 
and  other  laborers  are  numerous,  while 
Turks  of  the  wealthier  classes  are  abun- 
dantly in  evidence  in  the  Salonica  cafes.  In 
Bulgarian  Thrace,  Greeks  are  unwelcome, 
but  no  attempt  has  been  made  to  expel  the 
Turks.  About  a  dozen  Turks  have  seats  at 
Sofia,  and  these  constitute  the  majority  of 
the  present "  liberal "  ministry  over  the  demo- 
98 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

cratic  and  anti-war  elements,  the  combined 
radicals  and  socialists  in  that  confused  and 
incoherent  body.  The  priests  of  the  state 
church  still  call  for  war  and  urge  their 
flocks  "not  to  listen  to  the  godless  prattlers 
who  talk  of  peace.  What  Bulgaria  needs  is 
war."  But  more  war  would  be  suicide.  The 
socialists  print  in  black  headlines,  "Let  us 
meet  violence  with  violence."  Even  from 
her  own  soldiers  Bulgaria  would  seem  to  be 
in  danger.  Their  experience  with  Roumania 
sickened  their  ardor.  If  they  were  gathered 
together  again  with  guns  in  their  hands  and 
brought  face  to  face  with  another  awful 
summer,  it  is  possible  that  they  would  make 
a  violent  and  bloody  protest.  The  Bulga- 
rian is  the  most  long-suffering  of  men,  but 
there  is  a  limit  beyond  which  he  will 
not  go. 

/  Chiefly  it  is  those  who  do  not  do  the  fight- 
ing who  want  more  war.   The  condition  is 
different  in  Servia  and  in  Greece,  where  vic- 
99 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH 

tory  has  brought  its  inevitable  demoraliza- 
tion. The  militarist  is  in  the  saddle,  and  the 
wise  and  conservative  counsels  of  the  min- 
isters, Paschich  and  Venezelos,  count  for 
little  so  far  as  the  management  of  Macedonia 
is  concerned. 

In  Servia  the  Bulgarians  are  mostly  not 
allowed  to  leave,  but  are  forcibly  converted 
into  Servians.  Their  "religion"  and  their 
names  are  changed  together.  Papoff  be- 
comes Papovitch,  Radosloff  is  Radoslavitch, 
and  the  young  men  are  at  once  forced  into 
military  service. 

Race  differences  are  not  held  of  high  im- 
portance. The  visible  essential  is  linguistic 
uniformity,  with  subordination  to  the  Greek 
patriarch  instead  of  to  the  schismatic  exarch 
at  Sofia.  It  is  not  strange  that  in  the  confu- 
sion many  Bulgarians  turn  toward  the  more 
stable  influences  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  The  belief,  partly  justified,  that 
Russia  has  betrayed  and  abandoned  Bul- 
100 


WAR'S  AFTERMATH. 

garia  helps  to  give  force  to  the  movement 
away  from  the  religion  of  Russia. 
%  The  final  legacy  of  war  is  corruption  and 
hate.  The  "heroic  war,"  to  quote  the  head- 
lines of  the  London  journals,  becomes  in- 
evitably the  " squalid  war/'  the  "mad  war," 
the  "sad  war/' 

J  But  in  all  this,  the  uninformed  and  selfish 
meddling  of  the  Great  Powers  has  a  large 
responsibility.  The  Treaty  of  London,  for 
well  or  ill,  created  the  mythical  kingdom  of 
Albania.  This  was  not  for  Albania's  sake, 
but  to  quiet  the  jealousies  of  Austria  and 
Italy.  The  treaty  deprived  Servia  of  Duraz- 
zo,  Montenegro  of  Scutari,  Greece  of  Epirus, 
thus  overturning  all  agreements  among  the 
allies  as  to  the  adjustment  of  the  liberated 
lands.  The  inevitable  alternative  was  the 
dismemberment  of  Macedonia,  and  as  no 
provision  was  made  for  enforcing  tolerance 
of  any  kind  in  the  heated  combatants,  no 
tolerance  exists.  Some  sort  of  autonomy 
101 


WAR'S   AFTERMATH 

should  have  been  given  to  Macedonia.  Its 
lands  should  have  been  in  some  fashion  held 
in  trust  for  its  people,  and  the  rights  of  per- 
son and  property  of  all  the  varied  races  in 
this  long-suffering  land  should  have  been 
held  in  respect.  Some  provision  for  safe- 
guarding the  rights  of  men  is  not  too  much 
to  expect  of  a  concert  of  Powers  assuming  to 
represent  the  most  advanced  phases  of  world 
civilization.  If  the  Powers  could  not  do  this, 
—  and  it  seems  that  they  could  not,  —  they 
should  have  kept  hands  off. 

With  half  the  effort  spent  in  wresting  the 
village  of  Scutari  from  the  hands  of  King 
Nicola,  it  would  seem  that  the  second  Balkan 
War  could  have  been  forestalled  and  the  un- 
fortunate adjustments  at  Bucharest  would 
never  have  taken  place. 

But  all  this  is  past  history.  The  fact  ac- 
complished cannot  be  changed,  and  the  great 
migration,  like  that  forty  years  ago  from 
Alsace-Lorraine,  cannot  be  turned  back- 
102 


WAR'S   AFTERMATH 

ward  to  the  abandoned  homes.  There  is  some 
degree  of  hope  for  the  future,  wretched  as  the 
present  condition  may  be.  The  new  popula- 
tions will  take  new  roots  in  time,  and  in  new 
interests  men  forget  to  hate.  Where  exhaus- 
tion makes  war  impossible,  there  is  time  for 
mediation  and  for  conciliation.  Bulgaria, 
most  humiliated  of  all,  offers,  for  that  rea- 
son, if  for  no  other,  most  hope  for  the  future. 
The  most  powerful  influence  in  all  south- 
eastern Europe  for  good  will  and  good  order 
exists  in  Robert  College  at  Constantinople. 
This  is  democratic,  international,  and  Chris- 
tian. Its  hold  is  stronger  in  Bulgaria  than 
anywhere  else.  The  intellectual  leaders  at 
Sofia  are  very  largely  its  graduates. 

In  any  case,  there  can  be  little  progress  in 
the  Balkans  until  settled  quiet  gives  oppor- 
tunity for  agricultural,  industrial,  and  edu- 
cational advance.  And  settled  quiet  is  still 
far  away.  It  awaits  the  time  when  the  civil 
authority  shall  everywhere  dominate  the 
103 


WAR'S   AFTERMATH 

military,  and  where  customs  unions,  cooper- 
ation in  business,  and  cooperation  in  thought 
shall  lead  these  people  to  recognize  that  one 
fate  befalls  them  all  and  that  the  welfare  of 
each  Balkan  nation  is  bound  up  in  the  wel- 
fare of  its  neighbors. 


THE   END 


_iv 

LOAN  PERIOD  ] 

J1OME  USE 

4 


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